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Talkboctopus | Vermont Complex Systems Center at UVM

Talkboctopus:

A Virtual Complex Systems & Data Science Seminar Series

SIGN UP TO WATCH LECTURES LIVE

FALL 2020 & SPRING 2021 SPEAKERS

• October 28, 2020 – 12:00 PM ET (UTC -4)Elisa Omodei
  Who, where, why: non-traditional data and predictive analytics to map socio-economic vulnerabilities
• Date TBA, 2020 – 12:00 PM ET (UTC -4)Stefani Crabtree
• November 11, 2020 – 12:00 PM ET (UTC -4)Casey Fiesler
• November 18, 2020 – 12:00 PM ET (UTC -4)Guillermo García-Pérez
• December 9, 2020 – 12:00 PM ET (UTC -4)Karissa Sanbonmatsu
• January 20, 2021 – 12:00 PM ET (UTC -4)Timnit Gebru
• February 24, 2021 – 12:00 PM ET (UTC -4)Marie-Josée Fortin
  Ecological Networks in Dynamics Landscapes
• March 17, 2021 – 12:00 PM ET (UTC -4)M. Ángeles Serrano
• April 14, 2021 – 12:00 PM ET (UTC -4)Fernanda S. Valdovinos
• April 21, 2021 – 12:00 PM ET (UTC -4)Carlos Gershenson

PREVIOUS SPEAKERS

• LIST OF PREVIOUS SPEAKERS & ARCHIVE VIDEOS 
  • August 31, 2020 – 4:00 PM EDTDJ Patil, Chief Technology Officer, Devoted Health, Former U.S. Chief Data Scientist
  • July 8, 2020 – 12:00 PM EDTClio Andris, Spatial Social Network (SSN) Analysis: Social Networks in Geographic Space
  • June 9, 2020 – 12:00 PM EDTJosh Weitz – Modeling Shield Immunity: From Concept to Implementation

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Talkboctopus | Vermont Complex Systems Center at UVM

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Beyond the Tavistock and S-cubed legacy – Coevolving Innovations

Beyond the Tavistock and S-cubed legacy

 September 29, 2020  daviding 0 Comments

While it’s important to appreciate the systems thinking foundations laid down by the Tavistock Institute and U. Pennsylvania Social Systems Science (S³, called S-cubed) program, practically all of the original researchers are no longer with us.  Luminaries who have passed include Eric L. Trist (-1993), Fred E. Emery (-1997), and Russell L. Ackoff (-2009).  This does not mean that systems research has stopped.

One individual who participated in it all is David L. Hawk.

• In 1972, he started at U. Pennsylvania in the master’s program in Architecture and Urban Planning, then continuing to complete a Ph.D. in Social Systems Science in 1979.
• We were both at the 1998 meeting in Atlanta of the International Society for the Systems Sciences, and then were side-by-side disagreeing with everyone else at a roundtable at the 1999 Villanova meeting for “Russell L. Ackoff and the Advent of Systems Thinking“.
• After disappointment at the program at the ISSS Toronto 2000 meeting, four of us — DLH, Minna Takala, Ian D. Simmonds and myself — informally met as the Systemic Business Community.  We met around IBM Palisades and northern New Jersey.  This extended to a Symposium on Inter-Organizational Relations in Finland in 2003, and an IFSR Conversation in Austria in 2004.

We have been continuously been collaborators ever since.  DLH served as the thesis advisor for Aalto University on my Open Innovation Learning research.

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Beyond the Tavistock and S-cubed legacy – Coevolving Innovations

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SCiO NL – October 2020 meeting (virtual) | SCiO

Each month we either focus on a specific presentation or we work together on a case. This month there is a presentation on Sociocracy.

Note: The local time in the Netherlands for this meeting is 15:00 – 17:00 CET. Meetings are in Dutch, but with “visitors from abroad” we can easily switch to English.

Event Resources

Sociocracy: Better for Peers: governance is the new black

[SCiO-NL but presentation is in English]

In the world of New Work, Teal, Agile, Self-Organisation/Self-Management, Systems Thinking and Blockchain, talk about governance is the new black. Just try to remember how often you recently read about teams experimenting with new ways of collaborating and deciding together.

One example could be Zappos, a daughter company of Amazon, which got known for using a governance framework called Holacracy. Its implementation caused controversy with 18% of employees leaving the company while early adopters like Twitter completely abandoned Holacracy. Meanwhile blockchain platforms are experimenting with voting and reputation systems to make decisions, with long discussions in distributed governance network DGOV about the pros and cons of the designs.

The most recent online conference on organisational model Rendanheyi, hosted by the global appliances giant Haier, invited management thinkers Gary Hamel, who just published his book Humanocracy, and Bill Fischer; both of their interventions focused on the opportunities for a more human ecosystem design approach to business. Creating conditions for autonomy, speed and entrepreneurship were only some of the main speaking points for presenters and panelists, who also had another topic in common: the need for co-creation, based on equivalence and care.

So how do we design for governance which is based on equivalence and care? Sociocracy might be a design choice to look at.

These are some questions Vincent would like to address and discuss with you (and feel free to add more by sending an email to me@vincentvanderlubbe.com):

• Where did sociocracy come from?
• What was the purpose? What problem is it supposed to solve?
• How does it differ from other forms of governance?

• What is the core principle?
• What are core elements?
• What are the core values?

• What strands of sociocracy are there, what are the differences?
• How does Holacracy relate to sociocracy?

• Who is using sociocracy?
• What are some examples of practicing sociocracy?
• What doesn’t work so well?

• What are the best resources on sociocracy?
• Where can I start?

Vincent van der Lubbe

Our speaker for this session on sociocracy is Vincent van der Lubbe. After a career in financial services in an award winning network company he worked briefly for the systems thinking management consultancy Malik before venturing out on his own researching and improving practices for effective collaboration in organisations. He is also the Chair of Sociocracy for All, a non-profit membership organisation with the mission to make sociocracy accessible. For all, not just experts.

Speaker – Vincent van der Lubbe

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SCiO NL – October 2020 meeting (virtual) | SCiO

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WEBINAR | Systems Leadership in Action

WEBINAR | Systems Leadership in Action

Evaluating Community Impact, Webinars and Videos, Evaluation, Systems Change, Community Change, Pamela Teitelbaum

In this webinar, Pamela Teitelbaum, our Director of Evaluating Impact will hosted Tatiana Fraser and Rachel Sinha from Systems Sanctuary to share an overview of the capabilities and capacities of systems leadership

Complex challenges of the moment, like the Corona Virus crisis, climate change, rising economic inequality and gender-based violence call for new ways of leading. These new approaches demand leaders to move away from traditional hero style leadership towards relational approaches and emergence. While systems practice has risen in prominence over the last five years, it is often seen as rooted in western academia, and inaccessible.

This hour-long interactive session combinined reflection with an opportunity to assess your own skills and experience in the context of your work. From their research, Tatiana and Rachel surfaced some of the key capacities, capabilities and strategies for systems leadership.https://www.youtube.com/embed/vuijMnSp8wI

Take Your Learning Further:

• Explore Systems Sanctuary
  
• Masterclass on Systems Practice Starting October 13, small, international Cohort On Systems Change 101, Systems Leadership, Systems Mapping, Strategy for Systems Change, Working across Difference, Building Ecosystems for Positive Change and Reflective Practice.
  
• Bridging the fields of feminist and systems practiceTatiana and Juniper Glass published Bridging the fields of feminist and systems practice: Building ecosystems for gender equity. Sharing insights, new frameworks and lessons from four years of work with eight systems change collaboratives in Canada.
  
• Building ecosystems for Positive ChangeYou, along with a team or community – are starting to nurture a new ecosystem for systems change.
  In this guide we share common challenges we see our colleagues come up against to remind you you’re not alone, along with some insights and frameworks that have helped us and those that we wish we’d had when we were in this stage of development.

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WEBINAR | Systems Leadership in Action

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The coronavirus disease (COVID‐19) pandemic: simulation‐based assessment of outbreak responses and postpeak strategies – Struben – – System Dynamics Review – Wiley Online Library

Main Article  Free Access

The coronavirus disease (COVID‐19) pandemic: simulation‐based assessment of outbreak responses and postpeak strategies

Jeroen StrubenFirst published: 24 September 2020 https://doi.org/10.1002/sdr.1660SECTIONSPDFTOOLSSHARE

Abstract

It is critical to understand the impact of distinct interventions on the ongoing coronavirus disease pandemic. I develop a behavioral dynamic epidemic model for multifaceted policy analysis comprising endogenous virus transmission (from severe or mild/asymptomatic cases), social contacts, and case testing and reporting. Calibration of the system dynamics model to the ongoing outbreak (31 December 2019–15 May 2020) using multiple time series data (reported cases and deaths, performed tests, and social interaction proxies) from six countries (South Korea, Germany, Italy, France, Sweden, and the United States) informs an explanatory analysis of outbreak responses and postpeak strategies. Specifically, I demonstrate, first, how timing and efforts of testing‐capacity expansion and social‐contact reduction interplay to affect outbreak dynamics and can explain a large share of cross‐country variation in outbreak pathways. Second, absent at‐scale availability of pharmaceutical solutions, postpeak social contacts must remain well below prepandemic values. Third, proactive (targeted) interventions, when complementing general deconfinement readiness, can considerably increase admissible postpeak social contacts.

© 2020 System Dynamics Society

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The coronavirus disease (COVID‐19) pandemic: simulation‐based assessment of outbreak responses and postpeak strategies – Struben – – System Dynamics Review – Wiley Online Library

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Complexity Scientist Beats Traffic Jams Through Adaptation | Quanta Magazine

Complexity Scientist Beats Traffic Jams Through Adaptation

To tame urban traffic, the computer scientist Carlos Gershenson finds that letting transportation systems adapt and self-organize often works better than trying to predict and control them.

READ LATER

Rodrigo Pérez OrtegaWriting Intern

September 28, 2020

Mexico City is famous for its museums, food and culture, but also for its traffic jams. The city has a population of close to 22 million people and more than 6 million cars, and two-hour daily commutes to school or work are the rule for many people. Perhaps because delays are routine, it’s often socially acceptable to be 10 to 15 minutes late to classes or meetings.

How people travel in the Mexican capital is a complex problem that cannot be reduced to just one or two variables, and it is emblematic of the urban mobility challenges facing half of the world’s population. It’s also the kind of problem that for the past two decades has been a favorite of Carlos Gershenson, a computer scientist at the National Autonomous University of Mexico who is affiliated with both its Institute for Research in Applied Mathematics and Systems and its Center for Complexity Sciences.

To solve a complex problem, Gershenson believes, scientists need to let go of traditional methods and find novel ways to study ever-changing challenges. “Science and engineering have assumed that the world is predictable, and that we just need to find the proper laws of nature to be able to foresee the future,” he wrote while he was a visiting professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Northeastern University in 2016. “But the study of complex systems has shown that this assumption is misguided.”

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Complexity Scientist Beats Traffic Jams Through Adaptation | Quanta Magazine

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How can we amplify impact to foster transformative change? – Integration and Implementation Insights

How can we amplify impact to foster transformative change?

September 29, 2020

By David P. M. Lam

How can the impact of sustainability and other initiatives be scaled or amplified to achieve transformative change?

There are hundreds of promising sustainability initiatives emerging around the world. A sustainability initiative is, for example, a local food initiative from citizens and farmers who promote healthy and organic food production and consumption. Another example is the installation of solar panels by a community to support the use of renewable energies. Such initiatives provide potential solutions for urgent sustainability problems, for instance, biodiversity loss, climate change, social injustice, and poverty in rural areas or cities.

This blog post is based on a review of the literature to understand how sustainability transformations research is currently conceptualizing the scaling or amplifying of impact from initiatives. Although our focus was on sustainability, the processes are likely to also be pertinent for other initiatives.

We synthesized eight processes that describe how initiatives can purposively amplify their impact: stabilizing, speeding up, growing, replicating, transferring, spreading, scaling up, and scaling deep.

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How can we amplify impact to foster transformative change? – Integration and Implementation Insights

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Cautionary Tales – 99% Invisible

EPISODE 379

Cautionary Tales

THE OSCARS(r) – The 89th Oscars(r) broadcasts live on Oscar(r) SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 26, 2017, on the ABC Television Network. (ABC/Eddy Chen) JORDAN HOROWITZ, WARREN BEATTY, JIMMY KIMMEL

CATEGORY

Visuals

DATE

11.19.19

PRODUCER

99pi

We tell our children unsettling fairy tales to teach them valuable life lessons, but these Cautionary Tales are for the education of the grown-ups — and they are all true. Tim Harford (Financial Times, BBC, author of “Messy” and “The Undercover Economist”) brings you stories of awful human error, tragic catastrophes, daring heists, and hilarious fiascos.https://www.youtube.com/embed/8KeOxeuiZjs?feature=oembed

Galileo tried to teach us that adding more and more layers to a system intended to avert disaster often makes catastrophe all the more likely. His basic lesson has been ignored in nuclear power plants, financial markets and at the Oscars… all resulting in chaos. At the 2017 Academy Awards, Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway famously handed the Best Picture Oscar to the wrong movie. In this episode of Cautionary Tales, Tim Harford takes us through all of the poor design choices leading into the infamous La La Land/Moonlight debacle, and how it could have been prevented.

Find out more about Cautionary Tales and more about Tim Harford’s work here.

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Cautionary Tales – 99% Invisible

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I’m automatically sceptical of anything that’s a theory of everything, that has this kind of graphics, or talks about cybernetics and mind (remembering the infamous ‘Psycho-cybernetics’), but hey ho…

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The Cybernetic Theory of Mind: The Five Foundational Axioms

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The Cybernetic Theory of Mind: The Five Foundational Axioms

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Value Stream Design with a Lead Expert on the subject: Dirk Van Goubergen | Meetup

Tuesday, September 29, 2020

Value Stream Design with a Lead Expert on the subject: Dirk Van Goubergen

Catarina v.Hosted by
Catarina v. and 3 othersShareSystemsThinkingTOPublic group?

Tuesday, September 29, 2020
5:30 PM to 7:00 PM EDT

Details

A free flow discussion about Concepts and Principles to understand “the most underutilized and underestimated” tool in the Lean toolkit, what we came to know in the Western world as “Value Stream Mapping – VSM”. Since everybody nowadays states they are doing VSM in their companies, we will try to go to the roots, understand VSM through the needs that brought this tool to life. Then we will be able to say if we are really “Learning to See”.

We are privileged to be guided on this session by a Lead global expert on VSM, based in Belgium.

Dirk has more than 25 years of international experience in teaching and coaching implementations of lean/operational excellence in different manufacturing, healthcare and service industries throughout Europe, the Americas, Australia and Africa. Among his clients are companies such as Volvo, Mars, Philips, Daikin, Johnson&Johnson, Coca Cola, Amgen, Toyota, Delphi Technologies, TE Connectivity, AWS, etc. He works with executives, management, engineers, and employees in four languages and strongly believes in a teaching/coaching/mentoring approach to develop and empower people in order to get sustainable improvements and results. A major portion of his time he spends on improving flow and value stream design in and outside manufacturing.

For more than 10 years he combined his work in industry with academia at Ghent University (Belgium). As a professor of Industrial Engineering he taught and conducted research on productivity improvement, design of manufacturing and service operations and Lean/TPS. He was one of the founders of the first graduate Industrial Engineering program in Belgium and for five years also the program director of the “Master in Industrial Management” program. He guest lectured at several universities and business schools in the Netherlands, USA, Poland, Bulgaria, Mexico, Thailand and Israel. Currently he is in an academic sabbatical.

He holds a MS degree in Mechanical Engineering from The Royal Military Academy (Belgium), an MS degree in Industrial Management and a PhD in Industrial Engineering from Ghent University (Belgium).

Read more about Dirk here
http://www.vangoubergen.com/node/our-founder

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Value Stream Design with a Lead Expert on the subject: Dirk Van Goubergen | Meetup

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OhioLINK ETD: Lewis, J. Scott

The Function of Free Riders: Toward a Solution to the Problem of Collective ActionAuthor InfoLewis, J. ScottSocial MediaView Available File(s)Permalink:http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1148652968

Year and Degree2006, Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Bowling Green State University, Sociology.AbstractThe problem of collective action is the problem of free riders. Current theory argues that free riders are detrimental to group solidarity, and predict that free riders will be punished into compliance with cooperative group norms. Observational evidence from a variety of disciplines does not coincide with those predictions, however. Recent studies show that in many cases, 20%-40% of individuals will free ride regardless of the frequency and severity of punishment. This treatise seeksto explain the persistence of free riders by arguing that free riders perform latent functions in groups that actually maintain or increase group cohesion in naturally forming, long term groups. Analyzing theoretical work on the collective action problem from three disciplines – economics, evolutionary biology, and sociology – I show how drastically different approaches to the collective action problem converge on similar predictions about the nature and causes of free riding. I then show that these theoretical paradigms share a common origin from rational action models. I discuss why the current logic of rational action models are insufficient to offer a viable solution to the free rider problem. I then move beyond the traditional rational action approach by proposing an alternative kind of rationalisty which free riders pursue. Using game theory, I demonstrate the existence and utility of this new approach, and show how this alternative rationality contributes to a solution to the free rider problem by linking it to equilibrium theory. Equilibrium theory offers a means by which rational action models and functionalist models may be tied together in order to approach a solution to the free rider problem. I argue that free riders may perform functions in a group that serve to increase or maintain the solidarity of the group by tending the group toward a state of allostatic equilibrium. I argue that free riders validate or increase the status of productive group members; reduce the probability of incurrence of risk for productive group members; and increase group interdependence by driving down the group’s discount parameter. Through these functions, free riders may be seen as an adaptive mechanism by which a group might tend toward an equilibrium state in a dynamic environment.

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OhioLINK ETD: Lewis, J. Scott

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A revolution in our sense of self | Nick Chater | Opinion | The Guardian

Opinion

A revolution in our sense of self

In a radical reassessment of how the mind works, a leading behavioural scientist argues the idea of a deep inner life is an illusion. This is cause for celebration, he says, not despair

by Nick ChaterMain image: The conjuring trick of the mind. Illustration: Dominic McKenzie

Sun 1 Apr 2018 06.00 BST

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A revolution in our sense of self | Nick Chater | Opinion | The Guardian

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How can expanding our perspectives affect how we understand our systems? | by Mikael Seppälä | Systems Change Finland | Sep, 2020 | Medium

How can expanding our perspectives affect how we understand our systems?

Mikael SeppäläFollowingSep 15 · 3 min read

Have you ever wondered why most systems maps are flat and two-dimensional whereas how we understand “the system” actually depends on the mental models and paradigms that Donella Meadows outlined in her 12 leverage points?

In the Developmental Perspectives and Systems Thinking workshop we organised on 14.9.2020 we explore how changing Developmental Perspectives (mental models and paradigms) affect how we view a real-life system.

Mikael Seppälä from Systems Change Finland spoke briefly about how Adult Developmental Psychology, Metamodernism and Integral Theory can inform Developmental Perspective taking. After that we did a few group exercises on perspective taking.

The main point of the discussion was to explore what it is like to get an experience of Systems Being which could be described as the experience of systems versus the systems maps that we use to describe them very often in Systems Thinking.

How can expanding our perspectives affect how we understand our systems?

How can expanding our perspectives affect how we understand our systems? | by Mikael Seppälä | Systems Change Finland | Sep, 2020 | Medium