Occupy Wall Street’s slogan “We are the 99%” had been echoing through the United States and the world for just over a month when James B. Glattfelder and his co-authors released the study “The Network of Global Corporate Control” in October 2011. The study was a scientific look at our global economy, revealing how control flows like water through pipes — some thin, some thick — between people and companies. The finding: that control of our economy is highly tightly concentrated into a small core of top players, leaving us all vulnerable to fast-spreading economic distress.

James B. Glattfelder: Who controls the world?

In today’s talk, filmed at TEDxZurich, Glattfelder reveals that the impetus of the study wasn’t at all to validate global protesters. Instead, the study was conducted out of a desire to understand the laws that govern our economy, in the same way that we understand the laws that govern the physical world around us. Glattfelder and his co-authors Stefania Vitali and Stefano Battiston are complex systems theorists, meaning that they study a whole — for example, an ant colony or the human brain — as more than just the sum of its part. Complexity theory examines interactions between parts, looking for the simple rules that emerge when viewed en masse.

“Ideas relating to finance, economics and politics are very often tainted by people’s personal ideologies. I hope that this complexity perspective allows for some common ground to be found, “ Glattfelder says in today’s talk. “It would be great if it has the power to help end the gridlock of conflicting ideas, which appear to be paralyzing our global world. Reality is so complex — we need to move away from dogma. But this is only my personal ideology.”

To hear more about how the study was conducted, watch this talk. And to learn more about the results, and how they were received, keep reading.

To answer the question, “Who controls the world?” the study looked at ownership networks, breaking it down to nodes (such as firms, people, governments, foundations), links (the percentage of ownership) and value. Overall, the study looked at:

• 13 million ownership relations
• 43,000 transnational corporations
• 600,000 nodes
• 1 million links

At the top of this post is a 3D rendering of all the connections in this study. The dots represent the transnational corporations, nodes and links. Any section of it looks something like this.

As Glattfelder explains, in this ecosystem of transnational corporations, there is a periphery and there is a center — a connected network that contains about 75% of all the players. Nestled in this center is what the study calls the core. This core contains 1,300 highly connected nodes. While only 36% of transnational corporations are in this core, they make up 95% of the value of the entire network. This image will help to illustrate the core.

The authors of this study also assigned each player in this system a degree of influence. And overall, they found that the 737 top shareholders have the potential to control 80% of all the transnational corporations’ value. These top shareholders are mostly financial institutions in the US and UK. The first 10 on the list:

1. Barclays plc
2. Capital Group Companies Inc.
3. FMR Corporation
4. AXA
5. State Street Corporation
6. JP Morgan Chase & Co.
7. Legal & General Group plc
8. Vanguard Group Inc.
9. UBS AG
10. Merrill Lynch & Co Inc.

Download the full list here »

But their findings get even more extreme. The 146 top players in the core — representing just .024% of all the nodes studied — have the ability to control about 40% of transnational corporations’ value. This high degree of interconnectivity means that not only are we all highly influenced by a few — but that their distress is able to spread like wildfire.

The study, published in PLOS ONE at just the right time, quickly went viral. Read the study in its entirety »

Or check out some of the stories that ran about it:

• The New Scientist: Revealed — the capitalist network that runs the world (Oct. 24, 2011)
• The Montreal Review: Decoding Complexity (April 2012)
• Public Intelligence: Network of 147 companies control nearly 40% of global economic value of transnational corporations (Oct. 21, 2011)
• Science News: Financial world dominated by a few deep pockets (Sept. 24, 2011)
• Huffington Post: ‘Super-Entity’ of 147 companies at center of world’s economy, study claims (Oct. 24, 2011)
• Media Freedom International: Small network of corporations run the global Economy (April 4, 2012)
• Global Research: Bankers rule the world (Dec. 16, 2011)

As the story spread, Glattfeld and his co-authors took on the issue of whether their study was a proof of a conspiracy.

“Our study does NOT claim that the actors in the core are colluding. NOR does it claim that this structure is the result of some intentional design. We actually think that it probably emerges ‘naturally,’ as a result of simple mechanisms that are at work in the market,” they write here. “What we claim is that further studies are needed to investigate the implications of such a structure, because it is very well possible that it is [endangers] market competition and financial stability.”

The Wright Brothers’ flying machine took off from Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, on December 17, 1903. Credited as the first to successfully fly an airplane, the Wright Brothers were one of several in the early aviation game who were filing patents for their innovations and suing competitors who stepped on their turf. However, the US government eventually said ‘no’ to this patent warring.

“This was not so great for the development of the aviation industry,” says Ellen t’ Hoen in today’s talk, given at TEDxZurich. “This was a time when the US government was interested in ramping up the production of military airplanes. The US government decided to take action and forced those patent holders to make their patents available to share with others to enable the production of airplanes.”

t’ Hoen sees a parallel between this and the patenting of life-saving medications, like the antiretroviral drugs (ARV) used to treat HIV. Years ago, the cost for these drug cocktails was about $12,000 per person per year — meaning that people in wealthy countries had access to them while those in the developing world did not. India, however, did not recognize medical patents at the time and companies there began producing generic formulations. Soon, the cost dropped to $350 per patient per year. Many lives were saved as a result.

However, in 1995, the Word Trade Organization instituted new rules, calling for all countries to ensure 20-year patents for new medications. Since then, the number of patents in the area of ARVs has skyrocketed.

“Unless we do something deliberate and unless we do something now, we will very soon be faced with another drug price crisis,” says t’ Hoen. “Surely, if a patent pool could be established to ramp up the production of military airplanes, we should be able to do something similar to tackle the HIV/AIDS epidemic.”

t’ Hoen offers a radical solution. To hear about the Medicines Patent Pool, which allows inventors and pharmaceutical companies to offer up their patents for licensing by non-profits and generic drug makers in low income countries, listen to t’ Hoen’s talk. Below, hear more talks about issues with patents.

Drew Curtis: How I beat a patent troll
“Patent troll” is a term given to anyone who files a patent for something already being done, and then sues the people already doing it. In this talk from TED2012, Drew Curtis of Fark.com explains how his company was sued for violating a patent for “news releases via email.” While most companies in this situation settle — defending yourself can cost $2 million and take 18 months, if you win — Curtis shares why he opted to press on.

Kirby Ferguson: Embrace the remix
Creativity is not about coming up with something that the world has never seen before — it’s about copying, transforming and combining what’s already out there. This, however, complicates the idea of intellectual property. As Ferguson shares at TEDGlobal 2012, “American copyright and patent laws run counter to this notion that we build on the work of others. Instead, these laws and laws around the world use the rather awkward analogy of property. Creative works may indeed be kind of like property — but it’s property that we’re all building on.”

Beth Noveck: Demand a more open-source government
Beth Noveck, the former deputy CTO at the White House, thinks that a government should call upon its citizens to share their expertise for the sake of better governance. In this talk from TEDGlobal 2012, she shares how, in the past, a single person in the U.S. Patent Office has had the authority to bestow a patent. But with the new Peer-to-Patent system, anyone can weigh on applications, including those who have a deeper base of knowledge in a field.

Charles Leadbeater: The era of open innovation
Our patent system is based on an outdated idea, says Charles Leadbeater in this talk from TEDGlobal 2005. “All of our patents, our entire approach to patents and invention, is based on the idea that the inventor knows what the invention is for.” With rapidly expanding technology, however, Leadbeater says that innovations are cumulative, with new users adding on to previous uses on a near constant basis.

Johanna Blakley: Lessons from fashion’s free culture
While many creative industries are shackled by patents and copyrighs, there is one that remains the Wild West — fashion. In this talk from TEDxUSC, Johanna Blakley shares how, counterintuitively, this is a good thing. Because trademarking is virtually the only type of intellectual property in fashion, a culture has developed where designers build on each other’s ideas and where discount takes on popular items are created for different shoppers.

Charles Eugster may be 93, but he has no less spring in his step than he did as a young man. In this talk from TEDxZurich, he brings us a powerful statistic: 92% of Americans over the age of 65 have one or more chronic diseases. While many clearly cannot be avoided, Eugster points out that inactivity is to blame for many of the diseases those who have lived long lives endure.

During the golden years, people retire and tend to slow down  – and yet there is a connection between work and one’s physical and mental health. But life doesn’t need to finish after retirement, which Eugster calls “voluntary or involuntary unemployment for up to 30 years.” That’s why Eugster has taken up rowing. And weightlifting. Watch this TEDxTalk about the factors for successful aging from a formidable speaker, who urges us to “break off the shackles of convention!”