Resources in New to Complexity
At Home in the Universe: The Search for Laws of Self-Organization and Complexity
Book
The layperson's version of The Origins of Order - fresh insights into strategy making, system building from nature's viewpoint. Tom Petzinger annotation - "A bit daunting in spots, it goes further than other books in exploring what complexity theory might mean for the future of economics and organizations. And Kauffman's speculations on the origins of life are thrilling."
If you would like to review this text further or purchase it from Amazon.com, please click on the following link for: At Home in the Universe: The Search for Laws of Self-Organization and Complexity
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Boids
Website
In 1986 Craig Reynolds created a computer model of coordinated animal motion such a bird flocks and fish schools. He called the software boids. This simulation has become well-known in complexity for its graphic illustration of the principle that complex behavior emerges from simple rules. Boids is an example of individual-based model, a class of simulation used to capture the global behavior of la large number of interacting autonomous agents..
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Changing Conversations in Organizations: A complexity approach to change
Book
One can mount a strong case that at its essence an organization is simply many conversations, conversations which produce both stable and novel patterns. Changing an organization then is necessarily dependent upon changing the conversations..
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Chaos
Book
This bestseller hardly needs an introduction. It's a model of science writing, both in form and content. Although a small industry of chaos books has followed its worldwide success, this one is still worth rereading as a delightful way to glimpse the implications of complex systems..
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Chaos Under Control: The Art and Science of Complexity
Book
One of the best introductions to complexity sciences covering the whole gamut of the field including complex, adaptive systems, nonlinear dynamics and chaos, fractals, cellular automata, neural nets, and genetic algorithms. This book is extremely clear and well-written but it does require college level mathematics. Probably has the best description of the logistic map, fractals, and cellular automata in the literature.
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Complexity Digest
Website
A free online complexity digest, available online and via email. The mission of Complexity Digest is to collect and disseminate online complexity science related information to anybody interested in the topic.
Use the nature of connections about complexity to:
Speed up its evolutionary development;
Extend its interactions crossing over disciplines, levels of knowledge and geography to find new research and new applications.
Complexity Digest is edited by Dr. Gottfried Mayer, a member of the complexity community since his residence at the Santa Fe Institute fifteen years ago. The sponsor and publisher is Dean LeBaron, trustee of SFI and investment commentator. Contributors are welcome to send submissions to editor@comdig.de
For individual free e-mail subscriptions send requests to: subscriptions@comdig.org..
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Complexity Science and Health Care Management
Article/Report
This article provides a comprehensive overview of complexity science and its implications for leadership in healthcare organizations. A terrific primer for healthcare professionals interested in new ways of understanding dynamics in healthcare organizations and new approaches to management of these complex organizations..
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Complexity: Life at the Edge of Chaos
Book
(A wonderful introduction to complexity told by one of the best science writers around. This work chronicles the author's search for deeper understanding of this developing field through fascinating conversations with leading scientists in many fields - biology, computer science, psychology, ecology, physics. Don't miss it.).
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Complexity: The Emerging Science at the Edge of Order and Chaos
Book
(This one of the best introductions to complexity. Told through the stories of some of the leading contributors to this new science-engineer and psychologist John Holland, economist Brian Arthur, biologist Stuart Kauffman, and computer scientist Chris Langton. These contributors come from a variety of disciplines and have come together through the Santa Fe Institute.).
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Coping with Chaos: Seven Simple Tools
Article/Report
A complexity-science pioneer since the late-1980s, Glenda Eoyang has been applying principles from chaos and complexity to her work in a number of different areas, including organizational development and management practices. This book represents her efforts to show people in places and positions of management, among others, what these principles are and how they might be taken up to transform the working organization..
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Deep Simplicity: Bringing Order to Chaos and Complexity
Book
An engaging book on complexity by the astrophysicist and well-known science writer John Gribbin. Serves as a fine introduction to complexity science.
From the book jacket - "Why do traffic jams seem to happen for no apparent reason? Can major earthquakes be predicted? Why does the stock market have its ups and downs? How do species evolve? Where do galaxies come from? What is the origin of life on Earth? What if all these questions had a single answer?.
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Diversity as a Management Strategy: A View Through the Lenses of Chaos and Quantum Theories
Article/Report
The authors demonstrate the inherent value of a diverse workforce as a source of strategic advantage and organizational health. They state, "diverse organizations are better able to cope with complexity in the relationships they face because diverse organizations are better able to learn in ways that will enable them to cope with the unknowablility of the world." McDaniel and Walls contrast this approach with that of traditional, Newtonian-based management thinking which views prediction and control as essential and diversity as a barrier to organizational success..
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Edgeplace
Website
Edgeplace.com is a site designed to acquaint healthcare leaders with complexity concepts and leadership principles, resources, and examples of the ideas in practice. Much of the content of Edgeplace.com is contained in the book Edgeware: Insights From Complexity Science for Health Care Leaders written by Brenda Zimmerman, Curt Lindberg and Paul Plsek. Copies of the book can be ordered by going to this URL click here
Volume discounts and orders by bookstores can be secured by contacting Curt Lindberg at Curt@PlexusInstitute.org..
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Edgeware: Lessons From Complexity Science for Health Care Leaders
Book
Annotation by Tom Petzinger – "At last. Authors who reveal the clarity in complexity. As a journalist and business author myself, I've read virtually every book seeking to apply complexity science to strategy, work, and economics. None, I assure you, comes close to EDGEWARE in terms of sheer clarity and utility. Though solid on the theory of complexity, this book's real breakthrough in its tremendous practicality for leaders. The pages are brimming with case after case--episodes of complexity in action that inspire as well as inform. For leaders (in hospitals and anywhere else) who ask, 'What do I do on Monday morning?' EDGEWARE provides literally dozens of suggestions. Don't get me wrong. Applying complexity is hard work. No book will ever make it easy to abandon command-and-control leadership or to let organizations 'play' their way into the future. But with EDGEWARE as your guide, the work will be joyous.".
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Emergence: A Journal of Complexity Issues in Organizations and Management
Website
Emergence publishes articles of a qualitative nature relating complex systems, sensemaking, psychology, philosophy, semiotics, and cognitive science to the management of organizations both public and private.
The readers of Emergence are managers, academics, consultants, and others interested in the possibility of applying the insights of the science of complex systems to day-to-day management and leadership problems.
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Emergence: From Chaos to Order
Book
The latest book by one of the founders of complexity science demonstrates how a small number of rules can generate systems of great complexity and novelty. In understanding the patterns generated, like in board games such as chess, Holland shows how we can gain deeper understanding of complex systems in life.
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Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software
Book
An engaging new book by a skilled science writer that explores, through engaging and understandable examples ranging from ant colonies to cities, the concepts of self-organization and emergence and how they are being more consciously used to shape our world. Esther Dyson says "Emergence will make understanding "emerge in your own head.".
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Fractal Variability Versus Pathologic Periodicity: Complexity Loss and Stereotypy In Disease
Article/Report
This comprehensive article proffers new complexity-based definitions of health and disease. Goldberger develops the case that healthy physiologic systems are characterized by fractal complexity, while unhealthy systems are marked by highly periodic (regular) dynamics and a concomitant loss of adaptability. A must read for anyone interested in complexity and human health..
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Fractal Walk on Wall Street, A
Article/Report
Benoit Mandelbrot, the famous mathematician and the first to "see" and name fractals, examines stock market behavior through a fractal perspective and contrasts this orientation with more traditional views.
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Fractals: The Colors of Infinity
Video
This delightful video introduces the concept of fractals by exploring the Mandelbrot set, which someone has called the thumbprint of God. This set, named after the mathematician, Benoit Mandelbrot, who first "saw" fractals is one of the most beautiful and remarkable discoveries in the entire history of mathematics..
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Fractals: The Patterns of Chaos
Book
This beautiful book is the visual way into chaos theory and nonlinear dynamics. It tells the story with wonderful fractal images from artists, computers, nature, space, and physiology. The matching prose covers basic concepts of the science in an engaging, elegant manner. You will definitely be glad you added this to your collection..
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From Control to Participation via a Science of Qualities
Article/Report
Brian Goodwin is a very prominent complexity scientist, with a strong background in biology and mathematics and a deep interest in health. This sweeping article explores the development of science, the emergent properties of living systems, and cautions against efforts to control and manipulate nature. He augers for a science of qualities and the cultivation of our intuition "as a vehicle of understanding and participating in emergent creativity of natural processes.".
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From Life Cycle to Ecocycle: A New Perspective on the Growth, Maturity, Destruction, and Renewal of Complex Systems
Article/Report
A fresh view of cycles of development and decline of organizations that goes beyond the S curve concept. The authors, using the complexity framework, explore strategies for helping organizations adapt and remain relevant in light of the ecocycle metaphor..
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Getting to Maybe: How the World is Changed
Book
A book filled with stories of social and organizational and insights from complexity science by three notable scholars in the field - Francis Westley, Brenda Zimmerman and Michael Quinn Patton.
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Hidden Order: How Adaptation Builds Complexity
Book
Tom Petzinger annotation - "This book is pure science - no history, no flag-waving - but it is startlingly clear and thoughtfully concise at 172 pages. John Holland is the father of genetic algorithms....you'll find much here that explains how systems adapt in both nature and the man-made world.".
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Introduction to Complexity, An
Speech/presentation
Looking for a short audio clip on an introduction to complexity science? At a recent conference put on by the University of Liverpool Complexity Network, Professor Peter Allen from Cranfield University presented this introduction. It's a great presentation that illustrates well principles of complexity..
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Out of Control: The Rise of Neo-Biological Civilization
Book
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(This popular, insightful, and wide-ranging work pulls important new pattern-building findings from fields as diverse as computer science, biology, physics, and economics, relates them to the new worlds of complexity, chaos theory, and post-Darwin evolution, and lays out the implications for creating complex organizations and systems of all types. Many of his findings are contrary to management traditions and practices..
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Pathways to Prevention
Article/Report
Certain patterns of human relationship emerge in tandem with successful infection control. .
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Patterns in Nature
Article/Report
The natural world abounds in eye-catching patterns. Consider the synchronized movements of a school of fish gliding through deep ocean waters; or the coordinated turns and swoops of a flock of starlings whirling among tall trees before coming to rest on a telephone wire. How do all the individuals in the school or the flock avoid collisions with their neighbors? How do they orchestrate their graceful movements?
The living world is filled with striped and mottled patterns of contrasting colors; with sculptural equivalents of those patterns realized as surface crests and troughs; with patterns of organization and behavior even among individual organisms. People have long been tempted to find some obscure "intelligence" behind all these biological patterns.
For access to the article click on associated document below..
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Practice of Medicine is in the Interactions- A Day with Robert A. Lindberg, MD, The
Article/Report
Dr. Arvind Singhal, the noted communications scholar and member of the Plexus Institute Science Board explores how Robert Lindberg, MD, has used insights from complexity science in his internal medicine practice. Read this issue of Deeper Learning to learn how ths science has affected how he interacts with patients, understands human physiology, and thinks about the operation of his medical practice..
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Self-Organization in Biological Systems
Book
Here's a fine publication from the Princeton Studies in Complexity series. This work contains an excellent introduction to key concepts in biological self-organization, covering such topics as how self-organization works, characteristics of self-organizing systems, why self-organization. After this introductory material, a series of case studies of presented; fish schooling, ant swarming, termite mound building, thermoregulation by honey bees are among the case examples.
Also note the website associated with this text. It contains many simulations. Go to self-organization.
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Simplicity on the Other Side of Complexity: An Introduction to Complexity Science and Management
Speech/presentation
If you're interested in a basic introduction to complexity science and what it suggests for understanding life in organizations and for new management practices, check out this powerpoint presentation..
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Soul at Work, The
Book
Roger Lewin, a prize-winning author of seventeen science books, and Birute Regine, a Harvard-educated developmental psychologist and therapist, tap complexity science to show us a better way to live and work. These dynamic story-tellers uncover the complexity principles at work in a diverse range of companies, drawing out important insights into the organizational dynamics of healthy, innovative, and successful organizations. Roger and Birute explore people-centered, relationship-focused working environments and the commitment and respect that these settings foster. You can visit http://www.thesoulatwork.com for additional information..
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Swarm Intelligence
Article/Report
Swarm intelligence is the term given to collective, self-organizing behavior that emerges through interactions, governed by simple rules, among social insects. The authors show how complex scheduling issues in business are being addressed using such concepts and how executives are beginning to use simple rules to replace traditional management control techniques and provide employees with both some direction and autonomy..
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Trust is the Lubricant of Organizational Life
Article/Report
Learn how Henri Lipmanowicz thinks about leadership and complexity science. His approach to leadership and his understanding of organizations are illuminated in stories from his career at Merck and his work with Plexus Institute, where he is Board Chair. Communications Scholar Arvind Singhal, PhD, Samuel Shirley and Edna Holt Marston Professor, Department of Communications, University of Texas El Paso, is the eauthor..
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Ubiquity: The Science of History...or Why the World Is Simpler Than We Think. New York
Book
Science writer and theoretical physicist Mark Buchanan tells the story of how scientists have connected seemingly unrelated disasters such as earthquakes, wars, catastrophic fires, and stock market crashes and shown how our natural world organizes itself into "critical states" or what the author calls the "knife-edge of instability.".
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Unshackled Organization: Facing the Challenge of Unpredictability Through Spontaneous Reorganization, The
Book
This is one of the few management books on the implications of complexity and nonlinear systems theory for the management of organizations. It is well done and offers up the self-organization approach to major change in contrast to more conventional approaches..
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Webinars from Plexus Institute
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View recent webinars in an on-going series from Plexus Institute..
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