This is the text of an article in the Washington Post by Dominic Basulto about last week’s events in the financial markets. Great stuff. When news first broke Thursday that JPMorgan’s credit derivatives portfolio had sustained a loss of $2 billion, and potentially as much as $5 billion, on trades gone awry, there was an [...]
Archive for the ‘Chaos’ Category
JP Morgan and the Price of Complexity
Posted in Accountability, Biology, Chaos, Economics, Evolution, Financial crisis, Innovation, Institutions, Knowledge and learning, Leadership, Networks, Organisations, Self organisation, Strategy, Technology, Trade on May 15, 2012 | Leave a Comment »
The Humanitarian Groundhog Day
Posted in Chaos, Evolution, Innovation, Institutions, Knowledge and learning, Leadership, Meetings, Natural disasters, Networks, Organisations, Public Policy, Self organisation on March 24, 2011 | 14 Comments »
Humanitarian coordination has been described in a new ODI paper as a ‘wicked problem’ which demands new and radical solutions. This post explores the longstanding incentive issues underlying the lack of effective coordination and suggests possible ways forward. In a paper published last year, Michael Barnett and I argued that the humanitarian system was stuck in much the [...]
To build peace, first understand the dynamics of war
Posted in Benoit Mandelbrot, Chaos, Conflict and peace building, Evolution, Knowledge and learning, Networks, Pacifism, Public Policy on January 14, 2011 | 1 Comment »
A fascinating 7 minute TED talk by Sean Gourley.
An interview on complexity and aid
Posted in Agriculture, Biology, Chaos, Innovation, Organisations, Public Policy on January 6, 2011 | 1 Comment »
…Because of our urgency to end poverty, we act as if development is a construction, a matter of planning and engineering, rather the complex and often opaque set of interactions that we know it to be… This is a excerpt from a recent interview I gave to Dennis Whittle (former CEO of Global Giving). Click [...]
Benoit Mandelbrot – A True Philosopher Prophet
Posted in Benoit Mandelbrot, Chaos, Economics, Innovation, tagged Benoit Mandelbrot on October 19, 2010 | 1 Comment »
“Why is geometry often described as cold and dry? One reason lies in its inability to describe the shape of a cloud, a mountain, a coastline or a tree.” Benoit Mandelbrot, 1924-2010 Benoit Mandelbrot, one of the most influential and original mathematicians of the past century, died last Thursday aged 85. Mandelbrot’s contribution to [...]
Former USAID Afghanistan Chief looks to Complexity Science
Posted in Accountability, Chaos, Conflict and peace building, Evaluation, Innovation, Institutions, Knowledge and learning, Leadership, Organisations, Public Policy, Strategy on October 5, 2010 | 3 Comments »
The most interesting story this week for anyone interested in complexity and aid issues is the news that Bill Frej, head of the United States Agency for International Development’s mission to Afghanistan from May 2009 until June 2010, will be the first ‘development diplomat in residence’ at the Santa Fe Institute, the leading global think-tank [...]
History on the edge of chaos
Posted in Chaos, Financial crisis, Knowledge and learning, Public Policy, Reports and Studies, Strategy on September 14, 2010 | 9 Comments »
Earlier this year, renowned historian Niall Ferguson authored a piece in Foreign Affairs which presented human civilisations as complex adaptive systems, in contrast with the traditional view of civilisations as moving through a gradual cyclical of growth and decline. As Ferguson argues, the cyclical model of civilisations has been long shared by historians, political theorists, anthropologists, [...]
IMPROV-ing Aid Through Creative Rigour
Posted in Chaos, Facilitation, Innovation, Institutions, Knowledge and learning, Leadership, Resilience, Self organisation on September 7, 2010 | 8 Comments »
Lessons from theatrical improvisation have clear parallels with group dynamics in other social systems, including aid agencies… Outside of work, theatre is one of my main passions. In my tentative attempts to learn more about different aspects of stagecraft, I have stumbled across some fascinating thinking which is of real relevance for Aid on the [...]
What brain scientists can tell us about learning in aid agencies
Posted in Chaos, Innovation, Institutions, Knowledge and learning, Leadership, Networks, Organisations, Self organisation, Strategy on August 13, 2010 | 3 Comments »
According to 2008 ALNAP research on organisational change in the humanitarian sector, ’all theories of organization and management are based on implicit images or metaphors that lead us to see, understand, and manage organisations in distinctive yet partial ways.’ One of the key metaphors used in that work, drawing on the groundbreaking efforts of organisational theorist [...]
Complexity, crises and moving beyond recipes…
Posted in Chaos, Conflict and peace building, Financial crisis, Innovation, Institutions, Leadership, Natural disasters, Networks, Organisations, Public Policy, Self organisation on August 6, 2010 | 5 Comments »
The argument that modern organisations have to deal with complexity on a daily basis is fast becoming one of the least controversial statements any analyst, policy maker or practitioner can make. But what this actually means in practice is up for debate. Some suggest that there is little or no rigour in statements such as ‘the world [...]
