Conference on Economic Complexity 2026: Capability compression and software-defined manufacturing
- Post by: Ozgur Keles
- July 9, 2026
- Comments off
My first economy conference, thanks to Prof. Cesar Hidalgo and Economic Complexity groups. On July 9, 2026, I presented “Capability Compression and Combinatorial Creativity: How Software-Defined Manufacturing Bypasses the Network Dependence of Complex Innovation” at the 2026 Conference on Economic Complexity (CEC), a global conference dedicated to the field of economic complexity, at Yildiz Technical University in Istanbul.
The presentation introduced capability compression: a framework for asking how much of an experimental and manufacturing chain can be supplied by a validated platform rather than by capabilities distributed across many facilities and expert networks. The proposed system combines programmable pulsed-laser processing, optical metrology, feedback, and transferable software recipes.
The economic-complexity question is whether such platforms can expand the experiments that a local team can credibly attempt per unit time and capital. Geography and expertise do not disappear: feedstocks, calibration, maintenance, certification, facilities, and scientific judgment remain essential. The hypothesis is that selected capabilities can become more portable and recombinable.
The deeper scientific opportunity begins in the earliest moments after a laser pulse. Femtosecond excitation can initiate competing transient pathways long before a stable particle, phase, interface, or device structure appears. A future research direction is to resolve these events from femtoseconds to microseconds and determine which transient species, reaction pathways, and early nuclei survive into persistent material states.
Conference extended abstract
The four-page conference extended abstract develops the capability-compression hypothesis and its testable predictions.
See the official Conference on Economic Complexity 2026 program and presentation listing.