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[PDF] Complex Adaptive Systems and the Development of Force Structures for the United States Air Force | Semantic Scholar
also: https://www.airuniversity.af.edu/Portals/10/AUPress/Papers/DP_0018_MURPHY_COMPLEX_ADAPTIVE_SYSTEMS.PDF
(And copy at https://media.defense.gov/2017/Nov/21/2001847257/-1/-1/0/DP_0018_MURPHY_COMPLEX_ADAPTIVE_SYSTEMS.PDF )
video:
Essential Balances in Organisations, Mataphorum 2019, Huizen – YouTube
Ivo says (on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/posts/velitchkov_essential-balances-in-organisations-mataphorum-activity-6749320334521978880-KNZL)
Here’s my talk on “Essential Balances” at a Management Cybernetics conference in 2019 in The Netherlands.
The event was in fact the 13th edition of Metaphorum Conference. Metaphorum was established in 2003 as an NGO to develop Stafford Beer’s legacy.
Stafford’s ideas had a lot of influence on my work, and in the book that is especially the case with the first balance, that between Autonomy and Cohesion.
The next Metaphorum conference is now open for registration http://metaphorum.org/14thconference
Ivo’s book: https://www.strategicstructures.com/wordpress/?page_id=2013
video:
Essential Balances in Organisations, Mataphorum 2019, Huizen – YouTube
source:
Strengthening community operational research through exchange of tools and strategic alliances – ScienceDirect
Volume 268, Issue 3, 1 August 2018, Pages 1168-1177
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ejor.2017.09.041
Get rights and contentUnder a Creative Commons licenseopen access
• Community operational research needs alliances e.g. with transdisciplinarity.
• Tackling complex problems requires tool-sharing by related communities of practice.
• A new discipline of Integration and Implementation Sciences (I2S) can be a conduit.
• Six tools/toolkits to enhance community operational research are described.
• Banding together will increase influence in research and education policy making.
Community operational research (COR) would benefit from forming strategic alliances with other areas of scholarly endeavor involved in tackling complex social and environmental problems. Intellectually this would strengthen COR as a community of practice, expanding its repertoire of tools and increasing uptake of COR concepts and methods by researchers outside COR. Banding together would also increase influence in research and higher education policy making to promote widespread uptake of the best ways of tackling complex problems and ensuring there is adequate funding and institutional support. A new discipline of Integration and Implementation Sciences (I2S), which aims to be a conduit between COR and others tackling complex social and environmental issues, is described, along with its origins. The role of I2S as a conduit is illustrated by presenting six tools and toolkits, which have been developed outside COR, but which may enhance its practice. They are: (1) knowledge co-production toolbox, (2) change management toolbook, (3) collaboration and team science field guide, (4) engaging and influencing policy toolkit, (5) ethical matrix and (6) matrix for distinguishing three different kinds of unknowns.
full article (and full journal edition) in source:
Strengthening community operational research through exchange of tools and strategic alliances – ScienceDirect
Free concept mapping software
Cmap | CmapTools
Cmap software is a result of research conducted at the Florida Institute for Human & Machine Cognition (IHMC). It empowers users to construct, navigate, share and criticize knowledge models represented as concept maps.
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Cmap | CmapTools
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The Environment Is Not A System | A Peer-Reviewed Journal About
DOI: https://doi.org/10.7146/aprja.v7i1.116062
This paper considers some of the limitations and possibilities of computational models in the context of environmental inquiry, specifically exploring the modes of knowledge production that it mobilizes. Historic computational attempts to model, simulate and make predictions about environmental assemblages, both emerge from and reinforce a systems view on the world. The word eco-system itself stands as a reminder that the history of ecology is enmeshed with systems theory and presup-poses that species entanglements are operational or functional. More surreptitiously, a systematic view of the environment connotes it as bounded, knowable and made up of components operating in chains of cause and effect. This framing strongly invokes possibilities of manipulation and control and implicitly asks: what should an ecosystem be optimized for? This question is particularly relevant at a time of rapid climate change, mass extinction and, conveniently, an unprecedented surplus of computing.
full article in source:
The Environment Is Not A System | A Peer-Reviewed Journal About
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Turtle Island Institute
Watch The Video
We are grateful for the many partnerships that enable us to bring our hearts and minds to these projects…Virtual Teaching Lodge
MashkikiGikendaasowinField Building
Rooted in Gichi Gaakinoo’imaatiwin (The act of greater or deep teaching) an Indigenous inspired design for Turtle Island Institute’s online platform to serve as a hub for communications, connections, and individual and community distance-learning offerings, such as online events, programs, workshops.
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Turtle Island Institute
Reilly Dow @ReillyPinkfish dear twitter, who are your favourite systems thinkers/practitioners/writers that aren’t white men? looking to gather writing & resources created by women, people of color, indigenous scholars, trans women, on #systemsmapping (including critique, the many problems with mapping…)
(1) Reilly Dow on Twitter: “dear twitter, who are your favourite systems thinkers/practitioners/writers that aren’t white men? looking to gather writing & resources created by women, people of color, indigenous scholars, trans women, on #systemsmapping (including critique, the many problems with mapping…)” / Twitter
The Kihbernetics* Institute */kɪbeɹˈnetɪks/ A scientific discipline for the study of complex, dynamical systems with memory
The Kihbernetics Institute – Understanding Dynamical Systems with Memory
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Frontiers | The Computational Boundary of a “Self”: Developmental Bioelectricity Drives Multicellularity and Scale-Free Cognition | Psychology
Front. Psychol., 13 December 2019 | https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02688
Michael Levin1,2*†
All epistemic agents physically consist of parts that must somehow comprise an integrated cognitive self. Biological individuals consist of subunits (organs, cells, and molecular networks) that are themselves complex and competent in their own native contexts. How do coherent biological Individuals result from the activity of smaller sub-agents? To understand the evolution and function of metazoan creatures’ bodies and minds, it is essential to conceptually explore the origin of multicellularity and the scaling of the basal cognition of individual cells into a coherent larger organism. In this article, I synthesize ideas in cognitive science, evolutionary biology, and developmental physiology toward a hypothesis about the origin of Individuality: “Scale-Free Cognition.” I propose a fundamental definition of an Individual based on the ability to pursue goals at an appropriate level of scale and organization and suggest a formalism for defining and comparing the cognitive capacities of highly diverse types of agents. Any Self is demarcated by a computational surface – the spatio-temporal boundary of events that it can measure, model, and try to affect. This surface sets a functional boundary – a cognitive “light cone” which defines the scale and limits of its cognition. I hypothesize that higher level goal-directed activity and agency, resulting in larger cognitive boundaries, evolve from the primal homeostatic drive of living things to reduce stress – the difference between current conditions and life-optimal conditions. The mechanisms of developmental bioelectricity – the ability of all cells to form electrical networks that process information – suggest a plausible set of gradual evolutionary steps that naturally lead from physiological homeostasis in single cells to memory, prediction, and ultimately complex cognitive agents, viascale-up of the basic drive of infotaxis. Recent data on the molecular mechanisms of pre-neural bioelectricity suggest a model of how increasingly sophisticated cognitive functions emerge smoothly from cell-cell communication used to guide embryogenesis and regeneration. This set of hypotheses provides a novel perspective on numerous phenomena, such as cancer, and makes several unique, testable predictions for interdisciplinary research that have implications not only for evolutionary developmental biology but also for biomedicine and perhaps artificial intelligence and exobiology.
continues (full article) in source:
Frontiers | The Computational Boundary of a “Self”: Developmental Bioelectricity Drives Multicellularity and Scale-Free Cognition | Psychology
MIL-STD-499B (DRAFT), MILITARY STANDARD: SYSTEM ENGINEERING MANAGEMENT (24 AUG 1993) [NO S/S DOCUMENT]
MIL-STD-499 B DRAFT 24AUG1993 SYSTEM ENGINEERING
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Using the Three Horizons framework to support systemic design amidst a pandemic | by Gemma Drake | On the frontline of systems change | Dec, 2020 | Medium
Gemma DrakeFollowingDec 9 · 11 min read
The pilot described below was co-designed and co-facilitated by Gemma Drake and Emily Bazalgette
To get the most out of this post, we recommend watching economist Kate Raworth’s short video explaining the Three Horizons framework.
https://cdn.embedly.com/widgets/media.html?src=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fembed%2F_5KfRQJqpPU%3Ffeature%3Doembed&display_name=YouTube&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3D_5KfRQJqpPU&image=https%3A%2F%2Fi.ytimg.com%2Fvi%2F_5KfRQJqpPU%2Fhqdefault.jpg&key=a19fcc184b9711e1b4764040d3dc5c07&type=text%2Fhtml&schema=youtube
This blog post illustrates and champions the valueof using a systemic framework in long-term organisational thinking, alongside emergency contingency planning. I describe a pilot programme we ran May — August 2020, using Bill Sharpe’s Three Horizons model as a learning framework for future thinking with The Children’s Society’s executive leadership team during a pandemic. We reflect on why we chose the framework at that moment in time, how it helped us and what we’d do differently if we ran the pilot again.
We encourage others to use, modify and adapt this methodology.
continues in source:
Using the Three Horizons framework to support systemic design amidst a pandemic | by Gemma Drake | On the frontline of systems change | Dec, 2020 | Medium
source:
How do we navigate uncertainty while trying to shift the systems we work in Tickets, Thu 14 Jan 2021 at 12:00 | Eventbrite
JAN 14
by London Policy & Strategy Network with School of Systems Change/Forum for the Future
Discover how how to navigate uncertainty while seeking to enable systemic shifts
Discover the Forum for the Future’s reflections on its approach to systems change and the forms of organising & governance supporting this
Find out more about the work of the School of System Change/Forum for the Future
Discover how how to navigate uncertainty while seeking to enable systemic shifts
Take part in a reflective conversation about how communities of practice can be supported and sustained
Thu, 14 January 2021
12:00 – 13:30 GMT
book in source:
How do we navigate uncertainty while trying to shift the systems we work in Tickets, Thu 14 Jan 2021 at 12:00 | Eventbrite
source:
Preventing the ping-back: Turning system shifts into systems change
By Seth Reynolds on 14 December 2020 , 5 minute read
By Seth ReynoldsPrincipal: Systems Change
As Principal Consultant for Systems Change, Seth works in the Research & Consulting Team, helping charities and funders improve their strategies and maximise impact through more systemic working.
Covid-19 has catapulted us into an era of widespread system change. Or maybe not.
Many of us during the early phases of the Covid-19 crisis spoke, perhaps prematurely, of this being a time of profound system change. Some voices urged caution, pointing out the stubbornness of our systems and their tendency to revert.
We are now perhaps just a few months away from the realisation of a vaccination rollout that should largely permit a return to business as usual. This is desperately needed for great swathes of our society, and the end to the crippling constraints of Covid-19 will of course be hugely welcomed by all. Despite that, the challenges we face will continue, perhaps deepen. With a £2tn-plus national debt, recession-induced redundancies, historic unemployment, the returning reality of Brexit and, for the charity sector, sharp funding falls, the post-vaccine party will be short-lived.
Whatever struggles and successes our post-covid world brings, what is certain is that we are currently still in the crisis, and this gives us an opportunity—a moment to seize.
Our current state between two states—the pre and post-covid—is known as a liminal space. In many cultures, liminal space, or liminality, is regarded as sacred: a state of suspension from which renewal can emerge—a space of becoming, of possibility.
So, with the clock ticking on this liminal moment, we at NPC are asking what kind of system we should be rebuildingin the sector, and we are engaging others with the same questions. Because without such shared reflection and action, building back better, levelling up, and so on, will become just slogans.
To do this, we are drawing on some concepts from systems thinking.
continues in source:
Preventing the ping-back: Turning system shifts into systems change
Not crazy about the headline, but doubtless this is an important part of the picture, despite the framing. Also, cool gif!
A Surprisingly Simple Biochemistry Rule Drives the Evolution of Useless Complexity
TOPICS:BiochemistryEvolutionGeneticsMolecular BiologyPopularUniversity Of Chicago
By UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO MEDICAL CENTER DECEMBER 23, 2020
New study shows that proteins become biochemically addicted to complex interactions without adaptation.
A new study at the University of Chicago has shown that elaborate protein structures accumulate over deep time even when they serve no purpose, because a universal biochemical property and the genetic code force natural selection to preserve them. The work was published on December 9, 2020, in Nature.
Most proteins in our cells form specific complexes with other proteins, a process called multimerization. Like other kinds of complexity in biology, multimers are usually thought to persist over evolutionary time because they confer some functional benefit that is favored by natural selection.
“How complexity evolves is one of the great questions of evolutionary biology,” said senior author Joseph Thornton, PhD, professor of human genetics and ecology and evolution at the University of Chicago. “The classic explanation is that elaborate structures must exist because they confer some functional benefit on the organism, so natural selection drives ever-increasing states of complexity. Clearly in some cases complexity is adaptive, like the evolution of the eye: complex eyes see better than simple ones. But at the molecular level, we found that there are other simple mechanisms that drive the build-up of complexity.”
continues in source:
A Surprisingly Simple Biochemistry Rule Drives the Evolution of Useless Complexity
Systems Community of Inquiry 
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