Theodore Modis is a strategic business analyst, futurist, physicist, and international consultant. He specializes in applying fundamental scientific concepts to predicting social phenomena. In particular he uses the law of natural growth in competition as expressed by the logistic function or S-curve to forecast markets, product sales, primary-energy substitutions, the diffusion of technologies, and generally any process that grows in competition. He is a vehement critic of the concept of the Technological Singularity. He currently lives in Lugano, Switzerland.
He has published about one hundred articles in scientific and in business journals, as well as ten books: Predictions, Conquering Uncertainty, An S-Shaped Trail to Wall Street, Predictions: 10 Years Later, Bestseller Driven, Natural Laws in the Service of the Decision Maker, Decision-Making for a New World, An S-shaped Adventure: "Predictions" 20 Years Later, Fortune Favors the Bold: A Woman’s Odyssey through a Turbulent Century, and Science with Street Value: A Physicist's Wanderings off the Beaten Track. His books have appeared in a number of other languages; Predictions has been translated into German, Japanese, and Greek, and Conquering Uncertainty has been translated into Chinese Long Form, Chinese Short Form, Greek, and Dutch.
Distinctions
2017 Certificate of Outstanding Contribution in Reviewing by the international journal "Technological Forecasting & Social Change"
1997 Outstanding-Paper-of-the-Year Award by the international journal "Technological Forecasting & Social Change"
Dean's List during undergraduate at Columbia University
First in class during High School at Anatolia College
Praise for ''Predictions''
"Interesting, well written, enjoyable, controversial, thought-provoking." - Simon van der Meer, Physicist, Nobel Prize 1984.
"A lot of highly selective fun re-invoking much in my own past experiences." - George Wald, professor emeritus of biology at Harvard, Nobel Prize 1967.
"You must read this book. It is the most delightful one on forecasting I have encountered in a very long time. Written for the enjoyment of both layperson and professional, it is fascinating and provocative." - Harold Linstone, Editor in Chief; Technological Forecasting & Social Change, 1992.
"We have the technology now to forecast many social phenomena.... I follow the work of Theodore Modis, who nicely sums up the case for utility and believability of predictions." - Kevin Kelly, Executive Editor of WIRED.
"A fascinating technique for making forecasts." - THE FUTURIST.
"... he does cite the relationship of his 'overall' 56-year cycles and evidence on the associated clustering of technological innovations to prior work by Kondratieff and Schumpeter " - Kenneth Land, SCIENCE.
"Can a well-known mathematical equation be used to predict a wide range of human activity? Maybe." - Vernon Church, NEWSWEEK.
iPhone/iPad Applications
He has created two applications for iPhone/iPad, The S_Curve and Biorhythm_Science. Together with Vasco Almeida they created applications that forecast stock prices like species by treating the stock market as an ecosystem: Stock Fcsts and 2Stock Fcsts for the iPhone and Stocks' Futures and 2Stocks' Future for the iPad.
Partial bibliography
An S-Shaped Adventure - "Predictions" 20 Years Later, Growth Dynamics, Lugano, Switzerland, November 2014.
Conquering Uncertainty: Understanding Corporate Cycles and Positioning Your Company to Survive the Changing Environment BusinessWeek Books, McGraw-Hill, New York, June 1998.
Predictions - Society's Telltale Signature Reveals the Past and Forecasts the Future,Simon & Schuster, New York, 1992.
Predictions: - 10 Years Later, Growth Dynamics, Geneva, Switzerland, October 2000.
Natural Laws in the Service of the Decision Maker - How to Use Science-Based Methodologies to See more Clearly further into the Future, Growth Dynamics, Lugano, Switzerland, July 2013.
Decision-Making for a New World: Natural Laws of Evolution and Competition as a Road Map to Revolutionary New Management, Campus Verlag-edition MALIK, Frankfurt, July 2018.
', ibidem Press, Stuttgart, October 2018.
', ibidem Press, Stuttgart, October 2020.
, Technological Forecasting & Social Change, 69, No 4, 2002 - an essay about the growth of complexity in the universe.