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 ‘Networks’ 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 »
Taming fragility?
Posted in Conflict and peace building, Evolution, Influence, Innovation, Institutions, Knowledge and learning, Leadership, Networks, Strategy on March 12, 2012 | 6 Comments »
This is a guest post by Frauke de Weijer (pictured), policy and fragile states specialist at the excellent ECDPM think tank. In a previous post on this blog, Ben explored the potential of complex systems research for thinking about statebuilding and fragility. In this guest post, I would like to take this discussion one step [...]
Facebook, social media and the complexity of influence
Posted in Campaigns, Communications, Evaluation, Influence, Knowledge and learning, Leadership, Networks, Strategy on February 20, 2012 | 5 Comments »
Influence is a complex process in the development sector. We have known this for some time – the work of the RAPID programme at ODI on understanding how evidence influences policy is very clear on this. But the wider socio-economic system within which development cooperation is embedded is no less difficult to influence. Many corporations, especially [...]
What are leaders really for?
Posted in Accountability, Campaigns, Conflict and peace building, Evolution, Financial crisis, Innovation, Knowledge and learning, Leadership, Networks, Self organisation on December 7, 2011 | 5 Comments »
A continuing theme on this blog has been the issue of leadership. Many reports and studies call for it, reforms are seen as impossible without it, critical challenges will not be met without it, and we are all ready to point out the lack of it (in others, at least). Despite the fact that leadership [...]
New Scientist Briefing: Can ecosystems show how to fix the euro?
Posted in Biology, Economics, Financial crisis, Innovation, Institutions, Knowledge and learning, Networks, Public Policy, Technology, Trade on November 10, 2011 | 5 Comments »
The eurozone, like the rest of the world economy, is a complex networked system. That gives it properties economists rarely consider but which could help us understand the current crisis. This New Scientist ‘Science in Society’ Briefing examines the issues. What is a complex network? Complex networks have many interconnected components which influence each other’s [...]
What Does The Atlas of Economic Complexity Mean for Development?
Posted in Climate change, Economics, Evolution, Financial crisis, Innovation, Networks, Public Policy, Reports and Studies, Resilience, Technology, Trade on November 3, 2011 | 9 Comments »
Ricardo Hausmann of Harvard and Cesar Hidalgo of MIT (whose work I have blogged about previously here) have just published the deeply impressive Atlas of Economic Complexity. It is built around an innovative, network-based methodology for understanding economies and their potential for growth. It represents perhaps the most systematic and in-depth application of the ideas [...]
The Humpty-Dumpty Problem
Posted in Biology, Evolution, Innovation, Knowledge and learning, Networks, Reports and Studies on June 23, 2011 | 1 Comment »
The latest issue of American Scientist features some superb reflections by Robert L Dorit on the limitations of reductionist thinking in the biological sciences. They have clear parallels for social sciences and, by extension, for social policy. Selected extracts are below. Despite Descartes’ contention that we could not distinguish a well-made automaton of an ape from an actual ape [...]
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 [...]
Philippines turns to complexity science to strengthen disaster preparedness
Posted in Climate change, Innovation, Institutions, Knowledge and learning, Natural disasters, Networks, Public Policy, Reports and Studies, Resilience, Strategy on March 15, 2011 | 3 Comments »
Following the Japanese earthquake, the Philippines government have announced plans to explore the use of complexity science in better understanding disaster vulnerability and risk. The effort is to be taken forward by the Congressional Commission on Science Technology and Engineering, in collaboration with the Philippine Disaster Science Management Center. Senator Edgardo Angara, Chair of Congressional Commission [...]
Whose Paradigm Counts? Guest Post 2 of 2 By Robert Chambers
Posted in Accountability, Evolution, Facilitation, Innovation, Institutions, Knowledge and learning, Leadership, Networks, Organisations, Public Policy, Strategy, Technology on February 15, 2011 | 9 Comments »
Expanding Paradigms In my first post in this two part guest series, I presented an account of the contrast between ‘things’ and ‘people’ as it was framed in my 1997 book Whose Reality Counts? and as many people in the development sector still perceive it. As numerous responses – both here and on other fora [...]
