It's Time for a Radically New Approach to the Challenges of Modern Complexity

Groundbreaking new book to be released October 5

HOUSTON, Oct. 6, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- In their upcoming book, A Categorical Defense of Our Future, senior engineers Esteban Montero and Brandon Baylor demonstrate that current approaches to problem-solving in business and industry are floundering when it comes to an increasingly interconnected world.

Every attempt to solve a problem creates a ripple effect of unintended consequences, some more severe than the original issue.

The stakes are both high and personal, because human lives are directly affected when systems break down.

"No one wants to say it out loud, but it needs to be said: what got us here can't get us there," says Montero. "It's time to wave the red flag. I've seen global companies spend decades and millions of dollars on challenges involving complex systems, and what they're doing isn't working. We need a fundamentally different way of thinking."

Montero and Baylor not only sound the alarm but also point the way toward a solution. They call their new paradigm compcreation, which is a portmanteau of the words composition and creation.

Compcreation rests on a branch of advanced mathematics called category theory, which is notable for its focus on the dynamic relationships between things. This focus gives it the adaptability that is necessary for the fast-moving and everchanging modern world.

A Categorical Defense of Our Future is the first book about category theory written for business leaders and business owners, CEOs, and executives.

Anyone who deals with large-scale challenges around data, safety, and systems will find this book to be required reading.

Montero and Baylor are MIT-educated senior engineers. Between them, they have four master's degrees and nearly thirty years of engineering experience at global companies.

They are also the only people ever approved to write a book by their Fortune 500 employer.

"We could see that someone within industry needed to write this book, and we took it on," says Baylor. "It doesn't go deeply into category theory itself, because there are other books for that. Our book demonstrates why category theory is what we need as we design modern systems."

"We hope to point the way toward a completely new perspective for thinking and working both within and outside of industry," adds Montero. "We think this will be revolutionary, and it's a revolution the world badly needs."

The book will be released widely on October 5.

Request review copies or interviews via [email protected]. Learn more about the book and its authors at www.categoricalfuture.com. For updates, follow Esteban Montero at www.linkedin.com/in/jemonterov/ and Brandon Baylor at www.linkedin.com/in/brandonbaylor/.

Review

Modern technology is increasingly indistinguishable from magic, and its incantations are written in math. Unfortunately, mathematicians are challenged to explain what they do and why it matters. Baylor and Montero have written a book for the rest of us, explaining why composition is the key to understanding today's world and building tomorrow's.

A Categorical Defense of Our Future complements broad-ranging academic theory with a deep, lived experience from corporate industry to argue for a more principled understanding of the systems that govern our lives, from markets and institutions to communities and ecosystems. With clear prose and concrete examples, the authors show us why existing approaches to complexity fail, and point the way towards a new science of systems to help us understand the nth order effects of our interactions in an increasingly complex world.

Spencer Breiner, Ph.D., Mathematician at the National Institute of Standards and Technology

Hilary Ritz
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SOURCE Esteban Montero and Brandon Baylor