Blog 2016-07-02T15:31:36+00:00

February 2018

Digital Globalization

The process of globalization is entering a new era characterized by soaring flows of cross-border information. As the locus shifts from physical networks of production and trade to global information networks

Smart Platforms

Smart Platforms Machine learning capabilities are increasingly being offered as-a-service via cloud platforms making the technology [...]

Dataism

Dataism Dataism is the belief that mining data can reveal complete insights without need for prior [...]

Dark Data

Dark Data The term dark data describes the expanding universe of unstructured data that is inaccessible [...]

Big Data

Big Data Scientific research was the original producer of big data structures but today increasingly all [...]

Smart Contracts

Smart Contracts Contractual agreements have for centuries formed the infrastructure to inter-organizational cooperation, automating the workings [...]

January 2018

October 2017

September 2017

August 2017

Knowledge Society

With the advent of information technology today there are major changes in how people look at knowledge, create it and apply it. This time is now widely recognized as the beginning of what has come to be called the Knowledge Age; an advanced form of economy in which knowledge and ideas are the main sources of economic value added.

July 2017

Political Complexity Overview

Advocates of complexity theory describe it as a new scientific paradigm. Complexity theory suggests that we shift our analysis from individual parts of a political system to the system as a whole; as a network of elements that interact and combine to produce systemic emergent behavior. Such new insight helps us to better approach

Complex Projects

Complex Projects Traditional project management methods become obsolete as complexity goes up In 2009, the [...]

Self-organization

Self-organization Thousands of Starlings gathering in a flock or murmuration Self-organization is one of the [...]

Emergence

Emergence Our general conception of organization and the profession of management is built around the idea of [...]

Systems Thinking

Systems Thinking Complexity management is an alternative paradigm to our traditional management approach. If we are going [...]

Complexity

Complexity Complexity management, as opposed to traditional practices, may be defined simply as the management of complex [...]

Dynamics This is a caption for the image Feedback loops take place over [...]

Management

Management People working with computers Complexity management is an alternative approach or paradigm to more [...]

Sociocultural Evolution

Sociocultural evolution describes the process of evolution as it acts on macro-scale social systems of all kind. Sociocultural evolution through a process of variation, selection, and duplication of social structures and cultural constructs leads over time to create complexity

Social Adaptive Landscape

A social adaptive landscape is a model to social systems that tries to map out the entire environment within which individuals, social groups or societies are interacting and adapting to each other's behavior as they try to find optimal solutions to a given social context.

Community Structure

Community structure refers to the local structures that form within social networks as some agents interact more frequently and intensely forming specific substructures within the overall network. 

Social Feedback Loops

Social feedback loops describe a relationship within a social system where events feedback on themselves to create relationships of interdependence where different events work to balance each other or amplify each other.

Critical Thinking Skills

Critical thinking is the capacity to distinguish between valid and invalid processes of inference and information sources; it requires the formation of beliefs based upon sound reasoning.

Systems Engineering

Systems engineering is an interdisciplinary, holistic approach to dealing with large and complex engineering projects through the application of systems theory

Technology Network Analysis

Technology network analysis is the study of systems of technology via the lens of network analysis. It uses models and analytical tools to study how connectivity shapes technologies; particularly within complex engineered systems that

June 2017

IoT Blockchain

The internet is evolving into a new technology paradigm based around smart systems, the blockchain, platforms, and IoT. In the coming years, these technologies will interact and converge in new and unpredictable ways

May 2017

Pattern Formation

A pattern is any set of correlations between the states of elements, pattern formation refers to internally generated patterns. Systems that have the ability to self-organize; to create order from initial disorder.

Emergence & Phase Transition

This video presents the ideas of emergence, phase transitions, and strong vs. weak emergence. According to Wikipedia, emergence is conceived as a process whereby larger entities, patterns, and regularities arise through interactions among smaller or simpler entities that

System Dynamics Overview

In this video, we give an overview of the area of system dynamics, a branch of systems theory that tries to model and understand the dynamic behavior of complex systems over time

System Science

Systems theory is a formal language that since its development during the middle of the 20th century has gone on to support many new domains of science under its canopy.

System Homeostasis

In this module, we will be discussing how dynamic systems regulate themselves within their environment. Many types of systems require both a continuous input of resources from their environment and the capacity to export entropy back to the environment

System Hierarchy

In this video, we look at the ideas of system hierarchy and abstraction. We can only get so far by talking about systems on one level of analysis as the reality of the world we live in is of cause vastly more complex, in that systems exist on many different levels.

System Efficiency

Whether we are talking about a car, political system or a farm we are often interested in answering the question how well does it work, that is to say what is the ratio between the resources that the system takes in and those that it outputs, in the language of system theory this is called the system efficiency. Whether we are talking about a car, political system or a farm we are ofte

System Function

In this module we start to talk about one of the key elements to our model of a system that is functions, functions are an important concept within many domains from mathematics to engineering and computation but systems theory abstracts away from t

Systems & Sets

In this video, we start to give an outline to what we mean by the concept of a system when we contrast it with what we call sets. The concept of a system is defined as a set of things that work together to perform some collective function this is in contrast t

Complexity Theory Overview

In this video, we will be giving an overview of the area of complexity theory by looking at the major theoretical frameworks that are considered to form part of it and contribute to the study of complex systems. Complexity theory is a set of theoretical frameworks used for modeling and analyzing complex systems within a variety of domains. Complexity has proven to be a fundamental feature of our world that is not amenable to our traditional methods of modern science, and thus as researchers h

Generalizing Game Theory

Game theoretic concepts apply whenever the actions of several agents are interdependent. These agents may be individuals, groups, firms, or any combination of these. The concepts of game theory provide a language to formulate, structure and analyz

Linear Systems Theory

In this video we will discuss linear systems theory which is based upon the superposition principles of additivity and homogeneity, we will explore both of these principal separately to get a clear

Systems Overview

In this module we give an overview to the model of a system that will form the foundations for our discussion on nonlinear systems, we will quickly present the basic concepts from systems theory such as elements, system's boundary, environment etc.

Fractals In Pictures

Fractals are a curved or geometric figure, each part of which has similar characteristics as the whole. Fractals are useful in modeling structures, like coastlines or snowflakes, in which similar patterns recur at progressively smaller scales.

Non-Cooperative Games

In game theory, a primary distinction is made between those game structures that are cooperative and those that are non-cooperative. As we will see the fundamental dynamics surrounding the whole game are altered as we go from games whose structure is innately com

Critical Slowing Down

Critical slowing down is the theory that in cases where a system is close to a critical tipping point the recovery rate should decrease. It occurs because a system’s internal stabilizing forces become weaker near the point where they break and the s

Complexity Science – A New Kind Of Science

Science in an inquiry into the world around us fundamentally based on empirical data and the development of models/theories to describe the patterns we find in this data. For knowledge to be considered scientific it is dependent on fulfilling a number of fundamental requirements,

Complexity Science Short Film

With narration from a number of prominent complexity scientists, this video tries to give an overview to the current state of this new area. Complexity science is an emerging post-Newtonian approach or method to science that has arisen over the past few decades to present an alternative paradigm to our standard method of scientific inquiry.

Economic Theory

In this paper, we outline some of the major considerations involved in the study of economics, including trying to understand the logic behind the decision making of agents, theories of economic value and the idea of intrinsic and extrinsic value.

Standard Economic Theory

In this paper, we will be taking a brief overview of the internal workings of standard economic theory. We talk about how it is a framework that applies linear systems theory to economic analysis.

Economic Agents

In this article, we will be exploring two different models given for agents within an economic context. We will talk about how standard economics offers this model of the rational individual sometimes called homo economicus, and we will draw upon the new area of behavioral economics which presents an alternative model to human behavior within an economic context.

Behavioral Choice Theory

Economics is often interpreted as the study of how people make choices in the allocation of their resources. Microeconomics hinges on this process through which agents come to make decisions and then act on these decisions

April 2017

VUCA Introduction

A short video introducing the acronym VUCA. VUCA is an acronym used to describe situations or environments that engender high levels of volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity.

March 2017

Game Theory Overview

Game theory is the domain of applied mathematics that studies situations of interdependence between adaptive agents. A game is a system wherein adaptive agents are interdependent in effecting each other and the overall outcome.

February 2017

Innovation Economies

There is a seed change in global innovation, from every corner a mandate for increasing creativity and innovation and we are hearing this in business we are hearing this in education we are hearing this in commerce

Platform Enterprises

With the rise of the services economy and information technology fundamentally new forces are at play in the global economy and this is giving birth to a new form of business organization called the platform business that is adapted to this age of connectivity.

Distributed Blockchain Economy

A central question facing any economic system is how to harness all of the resources available within the society towards productive ends and then distribute the returns in an equitable fashion. Within just the past couple of years, the topic of

Service Value Ecosystems

In this paper, we look at the nature of this new form of services economy, how vertically integrated, service providers now tend to engage in networked value creation in ecosystem-like environments - what can be called service value networks (SVNs) and how this development requires new cooperation forms in loosely-coupled structures of autonomous organizations.

Networked Organizations

We are pleased to present our short film about complexity management and networked organizations with narration from Don Tapscott. The rise of networked organizations can be seen as a new form of IT-enabled organization that is adapted to complex environments. The business climate of the new millennium is characterized by profound and continuous changes due to globalization, exponential leaps in technological capabilities, and other market forces. Rapid developments of ICT are driving and supporting the change from the industrial to the information age and the emergence of these new networked organizations.

Complexity Theory: Key Concepts

This video presents some of the key concepts in complex systems theory in pictures. We look at systems, non-linearity, networks, self-organization and adaptation using rich visuals. There are many definitions for what a complex system is here are just a sample of them; The Advances in Complex Systems Journal, gives us this definition; “A system comprised of a (usually large) number of (usually strongly) interacting entities, processes, or agents, the understanding of which requires the development, or the use of, new scientific tools, nonlinear models, out-of-equilibrium descriptions and computer simulations.” The social scientist Herbert Simons gives us this definition; “A system that can be analyzed into many components having relatively many relations among them, so that the behavior of each component depends on the behavior of others.”Jerome Singer tells us that a complex system is; “A system that involves numerous interacting agents whose aggregate behaviors are to be understood. Such aggregate activity is nonlinear, hence it cannot simply be derived from a summation of individual components behavior.”

The Rise of Smart Systems

As a revolution in information technology unfolds at an extraordinary speed, science fiction appears to be becoming science fact. Within just a couple of short decades, we have gone from the PC to the internet and mobile computing, to cloud computing, to today where we stand on the brink of a new

Platform Technologies

With the rise of information technology and the ever-increasing complexity of our technology landscape, platforms have become the design paradigm of choice for today's complex engineered systems

The Distributed Technologies

After a centuries-long process of centralization within just the past few decades, a new architecture has emerged to our technology infrastructure that fundamentally reverses this process

The Rise of Sustainability

Part two in our series "Age of Transition" this video explores the rise of the concept of sustainability as it has gone from the fringes to the mainstream within just a few short decades, driven by an environmental crisis on a global scale

Integrated Service Systems

Services are a whole new paradigm in how we think about, design, and develop technologies in the age of information. At its heart, this technology paradigm shift enabled by information technology is a move from the discrete one of products of the

January 2017

December 2016

Why Full Cost Accounting

In this video we explain the concept of full cost accounting and why it can be an effective method for managing common natural and social resources in a distributed fashion through the market

Digital Platforms: In Numbers

Short image and text presentation highlighting the scale and impact of digital platforms on the physical economy. This video tries to highlight how online platforms like Alibaba, Uber or AirBnB are playing an increasingly important role in organizing physical assets, from the flow of products exchanged in commerce to accommodation and transportation.

Economic Systems & Complexity

What is an economy? It is a surprisingly simple question that would leave many - even economists - a bit caught for words. Today we talk about economies in quite technical terms, with reference to supply and demand curves

Government As a Platform

We live in interesting times, one that is often contextualized as being a transition period as on the one hand our traditional industrial age systems of organization reach the end of their life cycle, show signs of faulting and becoming redundant, while on the other new networked information based systems of origination are being born and this chasm between the two is nowhere more prominent than within the domain of social go

Age of Disruption

At the turn of the 21st century our global economy is in both a rapid and fundamental process of change. This change is most often understood as a transformation from an industrial form of economic organization to a post-industrial form as the global economy shifts from being dominated

October 2016

Functions

Functions Functions are a central concept in both mathematics and systems theory that capture how a [...]

Homeostasis

Homeostasis All creatures are designed to maintain homeostasis, requiring them to regulate both their internal and [...]

Cybernetics

Cybernetics Information and control are the central objects of study within cybernetics, as such it played [...]

Systems

Systems The human body is a classical example of a system requiring the integrated functioning of [...]

Ambiguity

Ambiguity is the quality of being open to more than one interpretation. It results in the haziness of reality; the potential for misreading and mixed meanings to conditions. In relatively simple environments we can have simple linear cause and effect models that are

Uncertainty

Uncertainty is the inability to know everything fully. It is a fundamental property of complex systems primarily due to, the large number of elements, high interconnectivity, interdependence, nonlinear interactions and coevolution.

Services Economy

A services economy is an economy whose primary activity it based in the tertiary or services sector. The services revolution can be described with reference to very straightforward empirical data. Over the past number of decades, services have come to dominate advanced economies and are slowly but surely coming to dominate the global economy.

Value Theory

Value theory within economics represents all theories that try to define what economic value is, where it comes from, why goods and services are priced the way they are and how to calculate some form of objective price; if such a value exists

Incentive Systems

The study of incentives is one of the central topics in microeconomics - incentives to work hard, to produce quality products, to study, to invest, to save, etc. How to design institutions that provide good incentives for economic agents has become a central question of economics. Behind this though is the idea of motivation, that is to say, what motives do economic agents operate under.

Economic Networks

Over the past few decades with the rise of information technology and globalization, the global economy has become networked on many different levels. Both its technological infrastructure and its institutional superstructure have become increasingly integrated into dense, multimodal networks, from the micro level of individual organizations all the way up to the global level through global cities and the global supply chains that they enable.

Social Complexity

Social Complexity is the study of nonlinear social processes through the use of models from complexity theory combined with computational methods

September 2016

Logic

Logic Logic defines the interrelationship between things, an intelligible pattern that when derived leads to objective [...]

Cognition

Cognition The capacity for advanced cognition is a distinctly human characteristic and can be seen to [...]

Social Systems

A social system is a set of individuals and relations between them through which they form part of some interdependent organization as a whole.

August 2016

Emergence

Emergence Emergence has captured the imagination of people from many different domains, such as art, spirituality, [...]

Autopoiesis

Autopoiesis Mammalian reproduction whereby the community creates new members of itself to enable its persistence over [...]

Creative Thinking Explored

Creative thinking is the capacity to create ideas, which are both original and valuable. It involves connecting and synthesizing disparate information and ideas to create new and valuable knowledge or solutions.

Synergies

Synergies Synergies are often found among uber-social creatures like ants and bees where the insects work [...]

Integration

Integration Systems integrity is an important concept in that it defines a system's capacity to function [...]

Social Institutions

Social institutions are a central object of study within the social sciences, they represent enduring patterns of organization or structures built up around some social function, religions, governments, and families are all institutions that have stood the test of

Causality

Causality The impression of cause and effect is one of the most fundamental patterns that conditions [...]

July 2016

Abstraction

Abstraction An abstraction is a representation of something independent from its specific details or context, a [...]

Synthesis

Synthesis Synthetic reasoning involves combining disparate ideas to create a more abstract whole that integrates their [...]

Analysis

Analysis Analysis is a process of inquiry that breaks things apart to understand their internal structure [...]

Reason

Reason Reasoning is a distinctly human phenomenon that involves balanced judgment and adherence to logical consistency [...]

DIKW Pyramid

DIKW The DIKW Pyramid describes, an as yet not fully understood, but fundamental relationship between knowledge and information [...]

Hyperconnectivity

In the past few decades information technology has networked our world, a world that was in many ways defined and held together by its boarders and boundaries. Boundaries to countries, boundaries to organizations, boundaries to ourselves are all being radically disrupted by the omnipresence of connectivity as it drives convergence. Today the very nature of technology is itself changing, in its pervasiveness, in its degree of interconnectivity, in its proximity, in speed and scale. These boundaries that were once fixed, that allowed us to interpret and give structure to our world, are through hyperconnectivity becoming eroded and fuzzy. Building conceptual interpretations for this brave new world of convergence, a world without boarders, is something we have yet to achieve. As we do the same reoccurring tensions and contrasts between the martial world of space, place and boundaries and the dematerialized world of hyperconnectivity and convergence continue to play out through a plurality of different themes

June 2016

Reductionism & Synthesis

Reductionism is a process of reasoning used to describe things by breaking them down into their constituent components, analyzing the properties of these components in isolation and then recombining them in order to get a description of the whole system as a set of its individual parts, their properties and the linear relations between them.

Sustainable Development & Decoupling

The 20th Century, driven by scientific and technological advances, was a time of remarkable change for human civilization. But it was also a century when the extraction of many natural resources began for the first time in history to follow an essentially exponential growth path.

Water-Energy-Food Nexus

Food, water and energy are essential for economic development and the well-being of every society around the planet. When we talk about the "environment" it is to a large extent this nexus that we are primarily referring to

Natural Capital Accounting

Since a number of decades now the unsustainable nature of our industrial economic infrastructure has been made acutely evident. It is becoming increasingly clear that the linear model to industrial age systems of organization creates many negative externalities that render them unsustainable.

Adaptive Thinking

Adaptation is a behavior or response that is contingent on its environment, maybe the best way to understand it is to contrast it with reacting, we might think of reacting as a predefined response to a given stimulus, like an automatic door opening whenever someone approaches it.

Energy Disruption

With the rise of renewables and the smart grid our energy architecture is surely going to go through a profound transformation in the coming decades but is this transformation happening fast enough?

Energy Systems Resilience

As economies develop they require a greater input of energy, and they become more dependent on the continuous input of that energy in order to maintain their basic structure and processes

Systems Thinking In Pictures

Short image and text video presenting some of the main ideas in systems thinking. Systems thinking is the process of understanding how those things which may be regarded as systems, influence one another within a complete entity, or larger system.

Food Platform Innovation

Our food supply chain is both incredibly efficient and inefficient all at the same time. The system is efficient in that it produces huge quantities of food at low prices and is able to move these products around the world at low cost

Conventional & Alternative Agriculture

In developed nations today there is growing demand from society for an agricultural system that is both scalable and sustainable, both able to deliver on quantity and quality. Unfortunately it would appear that we are still far from achieving this. On the one hand we have our conventional agricultural system, that has done so well in terms of sustained incre

Social Agents

In the social sciences, agency is the capacity of individuals to act independently and to make their own free choices. Agency is normally contrasted to natural forces, which are causes involving only unthinking deterministic processes.

Global Food System: In Numbers

Short video on the global food system shown in numbers. A large percentage of the 7.5 billion people on the planet receive an adequate diet in terms of calories but 770 million people are considered undernourished, several hundred million

May 2016

Integrated Water Management

Water flows through almost every part of our economies and everything we do. It connects, agriculture, health, energy, food, environment and conflict. Of all the domains to an economy it is likely to be the most resistant to a reductionist approach to management.

The Value Of Water

Water which can easily be seen as the most valuable resource on Earth is in many places treated as if it did not have any value at all. But the scarcity of water globally - where and when it is needed - is an increasing economic reality that will likely change the nature of the value we ascribe to water in the coming decades.

Dematerialization: Explainer

Dematerialization refers to the absolute or relative reduction in the quantity of materials required to serve economic functions in society. The UNEP defines it as such”the reduction of total materials and energy throughput

Towards A Nonlinear Economy

Humans design things, we build systems with the available resources, scientific knowledge and engineering know-how to make our lives better. We experiment test ideas and options keeping the ones that work

Circular Business Models

As we shift from a linear to a nonlinear economic model the circular economy is enabling an ocean of new value opportunities. Value is shifting from forming part of a linear value chain to all of the space around it; closing loops, looking at synergies between industries, connecting end users, managing full lifecycle and networks of collaboration.

Social Functions

Within any given social system a number of collective functions need to be performed for the system to be maintained and develop over time, these functions might include, basic biological reproduction of the population, for which we have the institution of the family, or economic functions such as manufacturing products, for which we have businesses or political functions such as collective social decision making for which we have the institution of government.

The Water Crisis In Numbers

Short image and text video explaining the water crisis through numbers. Earth has an estimated 1.4 billion cubic km of water. But most of it is in the oceans, less than 1 percent of it is liquid fresh water

April 2016

Dematerialization

What is an economy? Is it things, stuff like cars, houses, washing machines and computers? Or is it services? The function of those things, payment services, cleaning services, heating, communication etc. We might say it is both. All the products around us deliver some functionality,

Schemata

Schemata Encyclopedias may be thought of as examples of schemata. They provide a structured and coherent [...]

Social Structure

In the social sciences, social structures are the patterns of social arrangement in society that are both emergent from and determinant of the actions and relations between agents, as enduring patterns of behavior and interaction they define some form of order to the overall system.

March 2016

Social Self-Organization

Self-organization is a type of pattern formation, a means through which some form of order or coordination is developed. There are essentially just two basic methods through which social coordination and order can occur.

February 2016

January 2016

Ecosystems

An ecosystem can be defined as a physical system composed of a set of biotic and abiotic elements that are interdependent in affecting each other and the overall state of the system

Non-Equilibrium Thermodynamics

Thermodynamics, in its generalized sense, is the theory and study of how energy transforms matter within all physical systems, from the formation of stars to photosynthesis to the running of a car

Ecological Synergies

The term synergy comes from the word meaning "working together" as it describes two or more things that interact to create a combined effect that is greater or less than each effect in isolation.

Stability Landscape

A stability landscape is a mathematical model representing the various stable and unstable states that a system (such as an ecosystem) may occupy.

Social Networks

A social network is an abstract representation of a social system in terms of its relations and structure of connectivity. The basic constituents of a social graph are nodes and edges, nodes are people or groups of people, edges - also called ties - represent the relationships between these social actors, which can come in many different kinds, such as friendship, kinship, colleague etc.

Synchronization

[wd_asp id=26] Synchronization James's flamingo mating ritual, an example of synchronization where all the elements within [...]

Ecological Feedback Loops

Ecosystem feedback is the effect that change in one part of an ecosystem has on another and how this effect then feeds back to affect the source of the change inducing more or less of it.

Social Network Structure

Social network structure describes the makeup of the overall social network. There are a number of major factors shaping the overall make-up to a social network including the density of connections being a primary factor as it tells us how connected an agent is on average;  the average path length is a second key overall metric as it tells us how close together any two agents are on average.

Ecological Networks

An ecological network is a map of the interaction between the biotic(and possibly abiotic) elements of an ecosystem, the classical example being a food web which is a network capturing the trophic interactions between the various species.

Social Dynamics

Social dynamics is the study of how social systems change over time, with a focus on macro, recurring patterns of change that emerge out of the local interactions between agents.

Industrial Ecology

Industrial ecology has arisen over the past few decades as the study to coupled environmental and industrial systems, offering a systems-based approach to modelling, designing and managing industrial systems in relation to the natural environment.

Socio-Ecological Systems

A socio-ecological system is a type of complex adaptive system composed of two primary subdomains, a human society and economy on the one hand and a biological ecology on the other.

Adaptive Capacity

Adaptive capacity is the capacity of a socio-ecological system to respond to change of some kind, by generating the appropriate response.

December 2015

Complexity Economics Overview

Complexity economics is an alternative paradigm within economic science based upon complexity theory and nonlinear models. Within this theoretical framework the economy is modeled as an open system composed of heterogeneous agents with bounded rationality, which gives rise to networks of interactions that we call institutions, and macro level non-equilibrium state to the economy that is in constant change driven by internal dynamics.

Evolutionary Economics

Evolutionary economics is an alternative paradigm to economic development that is focused on the internal dynamics through which the macroeconomy generates novel phenomena and changes over time in an evolutionary process, without the guidance of some centralized regulatory mechanism.

Economic Self-Organization

Self-organization is the emergence of a globally coherent pattern of organization out of the local interactions between initially independent components. It is in many ways very much counter-intuitive to our traditional beliefs about order having to be imposed from some external top-down design.

Behavioral Economics

Behavioral economics is an approach to microeconomics that uses experiments to determine how agents make choices within an economic context, it studies the effects of psychological, social, cognitive, and emotional factors on the economic decisions of individuals and institutions and the consequences of this to broader economic outcomes.

Path Dependency

The concept of Path Dependence is used to capture the way in which small, historical contingent events can set off self-reinforcing mechanisms and processes that “lock-in” particular pathways of development.

September 2015

Complex Engineered Systems

Complex engineered systems are large networks of technologies composed of many diverse subsystems, densely interacting in a nonlinear fashion to create a multi-tiered network system that evolves over time

What Is NBIC?

In this video we give a short introduction to the acronym NBIC which stands for nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology and cognitive science

The Story Of Technology

Technology has always presented us with many questions about who we are, our place in the world, how technology relates to humanity and where are we going. Human beings and human culture have an inherent need

August 2015

July 2015

May 2015

Nonlinear Thinking

A line is often defined as the shorts path from one point to another, linear thinking then describes how we interpret events or act in terms of direct cause and effect means. When we use linear thinking to describe something we create a direct logical connection from one cause to one effect, if A then B

Network Thinking

Network thinking is about seeing not just things but the nexus of connections that they are embedded within and that give them context, it is seeing the overall fabric that these connections create and how that shapes and creates the space or environment around the thing that we are interested in

The Systems Paradigm

A short film looking at some of the key themes within systems theory such as the debate surrounding reductionism and holism, the Newtonian paradigm and Systems Thinking. Systems thinking is what we call a paradigm, a dictionary definition of a paradigm would read;

Design Thinking

Design thinking is a design process that enables us to solve complex problems. It combines deep end-user experience, systems thinking, iterative rapid prototyping and multi-stakeholder feedback to guide us through the successive stages in our design.

Event-Driven Architecture

Event-driven architecture (EDA) is a design pattern built around the production, detection, and reaction to events that take place in time. It is a design paradigm normalized for dynamic, asynchronous, process-oriented contexts; it is most widely applied within software engineering.

Self-Organization Design

Self-organization in design refers to the process of co-creation in the development of a product or service. Instead of a professional designer producing a finished product and pushing it out to the end user, self-organizational design involves the two-way interplay between the designer and the end user where products are designed to be redesigned by the user, thus enabling an evolutionary process of development.

Peer-Production

Peer production is a way of producing goods and services that relies on self-organizing groups of individuals. In such communities, the labor of a large number of people is coordinated towards a shared outcome typically through distributed networks without a formal, hierarchical structure.

Social Network Analysis

Social network analysis is the application of network theory to the modeling and analysis of social systems. It combines both tools for analyzing social relations and theory for explaining the structures that emerge from distributed social interactions.

April 2015

Social Resilience

Social resilience refers to the adaptive capacity, of a social system of any kind - from whole societies to individuals - to deal with change within their environment while maintaining and preserving critical structure and functionality.

March 2015

SocioTechnical Systems

Socio-technical systems is an approach to the study and design of complex organizations and technologies that recognizes the interaction between people and technology as a defining factor in the overall system's makeup and functioning.

February 2015

Systems Thinking – The Key To Complexity

Complexity has become a hallmark of 21st-century reality within almost all areas from business management to fundamental physics. This surprisingly quirky little word has proven to be a fundamental feature to systems in general one that won't go away and whether we are talking about the world of academia or industry it stubbornly resists our traditional methods of analysis. Complexity is a feature of systems that have many different parts that are highly interconnected and have some degree of autonomy. Examples of systems that are considered complex are; the human brain with billions of neurons that are highly interconnected; financial markets with m

January 2015

Technology Evolution

The term technology evolution can be used to describe how complex systems of technology are shaped by, and developed through the process of evolution over prolonged periods of time.

August 2014

July 2014

Evolution

Evolution Evolution is a gradual process that takes place over the course of several life-cycles of [...]

February 2014

January 2013