Icosystem assists with pharmaceutical decision-making process, Pharmaceutical Executive article
Icosystem Corporation Press Release
Cambridge, MA - 01 February 2004

Knowing When to Pull the Plug On Your Experimental Drug
Pharmaceutical Executive

By Michael D. Lam

Icosystems created a bottom-up, agent-based model to simulate a pharmaceutical client's R&D decision-making process. Typically, agents (employees, atoms, ants) embody a few simple rules. When they interact, unpredictable situations and emergent properties arise. Paul Edwards, Icosystems' president and CEO, says that the company adjusted agents' motivations, making some truth-seekers, and others success-seekers, and then ran the program to see what happened after decades of simulated time. The results, according to company chairman Eric Bonabeau, would have "more than doubled the risk-adjusted value of [the client's] portfolio."

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About Icosystem Corporation

Icosystem Corporation, a strategy consulting firm in Cambridge, Massachusetts, has emerged as a leader in the development of business applications for network theory and complexity science. Using the tools of complexity science and advanced computational techniques, Icosystem provides a highly flexible and cost-effective technology platform for exploring business problems and discovering or designing strategies that have significant impact. Icosystem's approach uses realistic models of complex business environments and evolutionary and distributed computational techniques to validate new business ventures or improve the performance of existing enterprises.