Jane Jacobs, renowned urban scholar and grass-roots activist, has recently topped the Planetizen list of the 100 leading Urban Thinkers by an ’impossibly wide lead’. Jacobs is something of a heroine for many communities around the world, real and virtual, not least the complexity science community. She approached cities as ecosystems and suggested that over time, buildings, [...]
Archive for the ‘Strategy’ Category
Urbanisation, complexity and poverty – or why aid agencies should be reading Jane Jacobs
Posted in Organisations, Public Policy, Strategy, Urbanisation on November 24, 2009 | 2 Comments »
Chaos, Complexity and Public Policy – An Interview with Irene Sanders
Posted in Public Policy, Strategy on November 22, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
The Woodrow Wilson Centre runs the Dialogue programme – weekly, half-hour raido and TV conversations with renowned public figures, scholars, journalists, and authors. Early November saw a stimulating Dialogue interview with Irene Sanders, Director of the Washington Center for Complexity and Public Policy and author of “Strategic Thinking and the New Science: Planning in the Midst of Chaos, [...]
Latest Asian Development Bank ‘Knowledge Solution’ focuses on Complexity and Development
Posted in Evaluation, Knowledge and learning, Public Policy, Reports and Studies, Strategy on November 21, 2009 | 1 Comment »
Olivier Serrat, Head of Knowledge Management at the Asian Development Bank, has just published a short paper on complexity and development, as part of their Knowledge Solutions series. Brief excerpt and link below. Development is a complex, adaptive process but—with exceptions—development work has not been conducted as such… development assistance often follows a linear approach to [...]
From Architects to Gardeners
Posted in Organisations, Public Policy, Reports and Studies, Resilience, Strategy on November 16, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Henry Kissinger held a party recently for his protege, Joshua Ramo Cooper. Speaking about Ramo Cooper’s new book to a New Yorker reporter, he said, “[it] has one basic theme that is a little difficult for me, which is that my generation is sort of a bunch of dodos.” The Age of the Unthinkable: Why the [...]
Is diversity the key to resilience in complex social-ecological systems?
Posted in Public Policy, Reports and Studies, Resilience, Strategy on November 11, 2009 | 3 Comments »
I am just reading Complexity Theory for a Sustainable Future, a 2008 book edited by Jon Norberg and Graeme S. Cumming. The chapter I have just finished ’Diversity and Resilience of Social-Ecological Systems’ is co-authored by Elinor Ostrom, who shared this years Nobel Prize in Economics. So far, it makes for fascinating reading. The authors provide an account of how complex [...]
An Innovation Dialogue on Strategy in the face of Complexity
Posted in Meetings, Strategy on October 28, 2009 | 2 Comments »
The 8th meeting in the emergent series on Complexity and Aid will take place in November 2009 How often do you question what will work in a complex and messy situation? Like many of us you are probably working to bring about some strategic change for the better – developing sustainable business models, innovating to [...]
Strategy in a complex world – 5th meeting in the emergent series on aid and complexity
Posted in Strategy on September 30, 2009 | 1 Comment »
The world is becoming increasingly inter-related, complex and fast-changing and yet many organisations continue to use traditional methods for strategy development, organisation change and leadership – even when they have questionable success. Why is this? What has to happen for strategists and policy makers to give up on behaving as if the world is predictable, [...]
