Innovation Dilemmas: An Info-Gap Perspective

Yakov Ben-Haim, Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, yakov@technion.ac.il

The search for ever better outcomes should guide the decision maker in engineering design, public policy, economics, medical decisions and many other areas of human endeavor. However, uncertainty, ignorance, and surprise may jeopardize the achievement of optimal outcomes.

The concept of an innovation dilemma assists in understanding and resolving the planner's challenge. An innovative and highly promising new design or policy is less familiar than a more standard approach whose implications are more familiar. The innovation, while purportedly better than the standard approach, may be much worse due to uncertainty about the innovation. The resolution (never unambiguous) of the dilemma results from analysis of robustness to surprise (related to resilience, redundancy, flexibility, etc.) and is based on info-gap decision theory.

Info-gap theory provides decision-support tools for managing the challenges of planning and decision under deep uncertainty. We discuss the method of robustly satisfying critical requirements as a tool for protecting against pernicious uncertainty. These ideas will be illustrated with a range of brief examples, and a closer look at design for seismic safety.

Speaker biosketch

Prof. Yakov Ben-Haim initiated and developed info-gap decision theory for modeling and managing deep uncertainty. Info-gap theory is a decision-support tool, providing a methodology for assisting in assessment and selection of policy, strategy, action, or decision in a wide range of disciplines. Info-gap theory has impacted the fundamental understanding of uncertainty in human affairs, and is applied in decision making by scholars and practitioners around the world in engineering, biological conservation, economics, project management, climate change, natural hazard response, national security, medicine, and other areas (see info-gap.com). He has been a visiting scholar in many countries and has lectured at universities, technological and medical research institutions, public utilities and central banks. He has published more than 100 articles and 6 books. He is a professor of mechanical engineering and holds the Yitzhak Moda'i Chair in Technology and Economics at the Technion - Israel Institute of Technology. Contact: yakov@technion.ac.il. Further information: http://info-gap.com

Selected References (see also info-gap.com)

• • Yakov Ben-Haim, 2006, Info-Gap Decision Theory: Decisions Under Severe Uncertainty, 2nd edition, Academic Press.

  • Yakov Ben-Haim, 2010, Info-Gap Economics: An Operational Introduction, Palgrave-Macmillan.

  • Yakov Ben-Haim, 2018, Dilemmas of Wonderland: Decisions in the Age of Innovation, Oxford University Press.

  • Yoshihiro Kanno, Shinnosuke Fujita and Yakov Ben-Haim, 2017, Structural Design for earthquake resilience: Info-gap management of uncertainty, Structural Safety, 69, pp.23-33.

  • Jim W. Hall, Robert J. Lempert, Klaus Keller, Andrew Hackbarth, Christophe Mijere, and David J. McInerney, 2012, Robust Climate Policies Under Uncertainty: A Comparison of Robust Decision Making and Info-Gap Methods, Risk Analysis, 32 (10): 1657-1672.

  • Michael Smithson and Yakov Ben-Haim, 2015, Reasoned Decision Making Without Math? Adaptability and Robustness in Response to Surprise, Risk Analysis, 35(10): 1911-1918.

  • Barry Schwartz, Yakov Ben-Haim, and Cliff Dacso, 2011, What Makes a Good Decision? Robust Satisficing as a Normative Standard of Rational Behaviour, The Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, 41(2): 209-227.

  • Yakov Ben-Haim, 2019, Cascading Failures in Hierarchical Networks with Unity of Command: An Info-Gap Analysis, International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction, vol.41: 101291.

  • Yakov Ben-Haim, 2020, Decapitation paradox with unity of command: An info-gap analysis, Military Operations Research Journal, 25(1), pp. 35-50.

  • Yakov Ben-Haim, Feedback for Energy Conservation: An Info-Gap Approach, Energy, to appear.