Decision structures as simple, chaotic, complex or complicated

Dave's short video is a good introduction to the cynefin framework that Cognitive Edge uses as it's core idea. One of the more important elements to keep in mind is that their approach puts data before structure rather than the much more common pouring of data into structures. 


The different ways of interacting with a system or set of circumstances depending on whether it is simple, chaotic, complex or complicated is also worth noting. Missteps here in organizations and management are as common as dandelions in a lawn. Leaders and managers who get this are comparatively rare. Those who actually apply it more rare still. 

David Korowicz video on Complexity

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Physicist David Korowicz documents the disturbing growth in the complexity of trade and financial networks and in the various types of infrastructure. He sees the collapse process as a system of re-enforcing feedbacks that cut investment in energy and R&D and cause supply chains and IT networks to break down.

Recorded on day two of The New Emergency Conference: Managing Risk and Building Resilience in a Resource Constrained World held on 10-12 June 2009, All Hallows College, Drumcondra, Dublin 9, Ireland.



Around the 18 minute mark, he reflects on something interesting. If all of the IT infrastructure of the last twenty years suddenly quit, we wouldn't go back to life twenty years ago, it would regress much more deeply in a matter of a few days to life much prior to 1990. Why?


As complex systems grow, interconnections goes up significantly. Also, what we've built in the last twenty years is tuned to the conditions as they have changed over those twenty years. In this there is the notion of collapse, ie. things don't break in a fashion that is  the inverse of assembly. Instead, collapse is a new form of novelty. He doesn't say that exactly but it seems a natural tentative conclusion.

Riders on a Swarm :: The Economist

What can ants teach us about how groups of living things function? Quite a lot, actually. With very little cognitive capability, ants provide evidence for how simple rules in a variable space that includes feedback loops can lead to very sophisticated and coordinated activity. Now, ants are not, in some sense, simple at all. Relative to the human brain, that ant brain is very much less capable. But compared to a comparable size of coal, an ant is vastly more complex. It is intriguing to consider how we might make better use of the characteristics revealed in ant functions to meet the demands we have for continuous innovation and improvement in human endeavours.

This Economist article from the past summer is worth dipping into if you'd like to ponder the life of ants without having to risk being swarmed. For seasoned complexity readers, I'm afraid there won't be a whole lot of new things to discover. It's still interesting stuff to think about, though.

Complexity Theory in the Social Sciences

This is a fine syllabus from Professor Robert Axelrod for his University of Michigan course on Complexity Theory in the Social Sciences (PS 793). It features an exploration of where social science and complexity theory interact and where they may go. The field is changing so rapidly and in so many dimensions but this outline captures some important aspects of it, particularly from a political science/public policy angle - as per Prof. Axelrod's specialty.


There are many very good links to other resources in the syllabus. Commercial applications are less well-represented (not the focus of the course) as the angle of the course is more oriented toward academic resources and projects. There are links to some simulations, the Santa Fe Institute, and adjacent fields of study such as cellular automata, chaos, and self-organizing criticality. 

A final resource to point out is the University of Michigan's Center for the Study of Complex Systems. The CSCS appears mostly oriented toward existing UofM students but there seems to be some possibility of for non-UofM individuals to apply for the program. Has anyone participated in this program or had any association with it?

Search 500 Billion Words for Trends

A colleague sent this fascinating link over that represents Google's entry of more than 500 billion words from books published as early as 1500. You can enter a word and see the frequency of use over time. I ran this one on "complexity" and the term appears to have risen along with the increased pace of life and culture.

You can visit here to see it live and to try out your own words or word combinations. It's interesting to see what words like "horse" or "satchel" or "Facebook" look like when you run the query.

Network Weaving

Complexity science can feel very esoteric, inaccessible and eye-glazing for all but us convinced CS geeks. If you want something that is consistent with complexity theory but which has very tangible and useful handles, you may find this Network Weaving site helpful.

I first came across the site while reading about the success of Appalachian economic development in Ohio. They developed a strategy based on intentionally building robust networks that generated actual economic value. Their approach clearly demonstrates that leadership, intentionality, structure, and planning are all requirements of adaptive organizations but the way these approaches are used led to multi-hub networks rather than hierarchical, command-control, structures.

It seems very likely that their insights and practices are applicable at different scales and settings as long as what is mimicked is the strategic/structural approach, not the context-dependent variables.

Over time I think it will become increasingly common to see social network maps of organizations, neighbourhoods, cities, etc. We'll get better and better at identifying fragile, vulnerable networks and will, over time, learn how to increase their adaptability. We'll also be able to see where the networks reflect a healthy structure that exhibits sufficient resilience to weather unknown change.

Adelphi University - slide deck

Ingenuity Arts - adaptive leadership at Adelphi U conference

View more presentations from guest110f5d7.

Stuart Kauffman joins University of Vermont

This news item just showed up. Stuart Kauffman, who is one of the gurus of complex adaptive systems research, will be spending the fall of 2010-2012 at the University of Vermont as the Macmillian Scholar-in-Residence. He was deeply involved in the origins of the Sante Fe Institute - ground zero for many of today's leading complexity theorists.

The full article featuring an interview with Kauffman is here.

For those of you who haven't had a chance to read Reinventing the Sacred, I would recommend this as a significant personal statement by Kauffman of how complexity research has shaped his view of the world. The book is a courageous and candid exploration, that will fail to satisfy anyone but will spark important thinking by all who read it.

I look forward to seeing what angles Kauffman's research work will take at UVM.

New Paper on Complexity Theory and Peace-Conflict Situations

Diane Hendricks has written a working paper that adds another piece of research to the exploration of how complexity theory might translate from the natural sciences to the social sciences. Her area of interest is in peace and conflict studies. Here is a paragraph from the Introduction:

Complexity theory in the natural sciences has brought fresh insight into the nature and working of complex systems and some have hoped that applying this theory to social systems, albeit necessarily in an adapted form, could be equally revealing and useful. I confess to being among their number although the degree and extent of the usefulness and applicability of complexity in these areas is not yet clear to me. I am, however, convinced of the potential to, at the very least, facilitate a more realistic (i.e. closer to the reality of how the social world works) and open approach to analysis and action for change. This working paper is an exploration of ideas, opinions and attempts related to the application of complexity theory to the field of conflict transformation and some early reflections on these.

These are important explorations and we are only beginning to understand how complexity theory might apply. We need to carefully work through whether there is something of substance in this approach or whether it is a fad that turns out to lack real explanatory power for organizing and designing human institutions and the resulting interactions. I am, like Diane, optimistic that there is indeed significant fruitfulness in researching these applications.

Complexity Theory - how it applies

The very sharp folks over at Cognitive Edge have put together a clean and simple video that explains at a very general level how complexity theory can inform organizational design, strategy and mapping. Dave Snowden, with characteristic humour, explains how a birthday party for kids could be organized in one of three ways and then ends with "and that's what complexity theory offers" for viewers.

I attended a training session with Cognitive Edge over a year ago on San Francisco and this is a welcome communication piece for complexity science.

Complexity Science and Social Entrepreneurship

This looks like a worthwhile read. Social entrepreneurship is an emerging line of thinking and practice that has clear crossover with complexity science applications. The book is now out, though I have not seen a copy yet. If anyone has seen it, I would be happy for some comments or feedback. In the meantime, here are the particulars for the book:

COMPLEXITY SCIENCE & SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP: ADDING SOCIAL VALUE THROUGH SYSTEMS THINKING

Written/Edited by: Jeffrey A. Goldstein, James K. Hazy and Joyce Silberstang. 2009. ISBN/ISSN 9780984216406 (646 pages + index), ISCE Publishing

"This ground-breaking volume explores social entrepreneurship from the perspective of complexity science and systems thinking. Case studies, models, simulations, and theoretical papers advance both theory and practice, providing an innovative and comprehensive look at these dynamic topics. Written by complexity theorists, international development practitioners, and experts in a variety of other disciplines, this must-have book is mandatory reading for everyone interested in this newly developing field."

Encyclopedia of Complexity and Systems Science

I look with envy on this institutionally-priced set of reference books. I've looked through the index and overviews and it looks to be a very useful set. Published by Springer, the Encyclopedia of Complexity and Systems Science includes hundreds of peer-reviewed articles and images to support the text. I've queried the McMaster University library to see if they will be getting a set. Hopefully they will.

New book: Complexity and Sustainability

This looks like an interesting read. Has anyone seen it or read it? The editors are Norberg and Cumming. There's one piece by Buzz Holling and many of the other contributors appear to be affiliated with the Stockholm Resilience Centre. Thanks to the FourCultures blog and the recommendation.

What is the New Science?

Plain English series of videos - various topics

Kiva - a great video overview of how it works

A Fistful Of Dollars: The Story of a Kiva.org Loan from Kieran Ball on Vimeo.It is no secret among my friends and co-workers that I am fascinated by Kiva and the way in which they have structured their work. They have managed to figure out very well the 'many-to-many' power of the internet and leveraged that with our interest in helping each other out, regardless of where we live. This video overview is a great way to learn about Kiva.

Visualizing Big Data

WIRED has written some interesting pieces on Big Data and how we crunch numbers in the age of the petabyte. This image of a software bot working through Wikipedia is the kind of overview that visualizing data can give. Ambient devices connected to any number of online information sources are another way of creating our own emergent properties from unimaginably large quantities of data. Is it fair to call this artificial emergence? We are farming emergent properties from things we have created, rather than simply experiencing the emergent properties in the natural order such as the wetness of water. Maybe we can develop a new intelligence that allows us to harness our own forms of emergence to get the kind of information we need in complex situations as leaders and designers.

Video on Complexity by Alan Smith

Alan Smith sent me a link to this fantastic video that he did a few years back for the Telus World of Science. I really like the look and feel of the piece as it introduces the nature of complex systems in a visually rich but very clear way. If the video continued, one could imagine it going beyond human beings as individuals and mapping the space of other emergent properties that are part of our everyday lives, the invisibilities that make such a huge impact on us.

London School of Economics - Seminar

I'm going to attend a seminar in Second Life put on live at the London School of Economics. The focus is on health care systems but features human applications of complexity theory. Session 4 has a panel of interesting people who will talk about barriers and opportunities for change in health care and the pharmaceutical world. Here are the panelists:

Prof. Eve Mitleton-Kelly, London School of Economics
Prof. Brian Salter, King’s College, London
Prof. Peter Allen, Cranfield University
Prof. Jeff Johnson, Open University

Collaborative Intellectual Space

Creating the right conditions for intellectual exchange and innovation is a critical role for leadership in many domains, including theoretical physics. Enter the Princeton Center for Theoretical Science. They have structured themselves in such a way that bright post-docs can range freely across disciplines and access leading contributors in cosmology, particle physics, astronomy, quantum mechanics and other interesting fields of research.

I'd like to tour the facilities and see how the space has been designed for interaction, study, and idea sharing. Personally, I find it encouraging to read about projects like this, where the search for great questions and courageous exploration of possible answers comes before disciplinary boundaries and turf protection.