Coevolving Innovations

… in Business Organizations and Information Technologies

The Systems Sciences and Systems Engineering

How are (or can or should) the systems sciences and systems engineering (be) related?  For the web conference for the INCOSE (International Council on Systems Engineering) Complex Systems Working Group on November 22, 2010, I decided to present a personal perspective on linkages.  The ideas were essentially in two parts, with

  • the systems movement as a system of ideas, including …
    • the systems science community as some individuals, some organizations and some publications; and
    • ten frames to guide thinking and discussion about changes in society, economics and technology in the 21st century (based on Ing (2011)); and
  • John N. Warfield’s “A Challenge for Systems Engineers: To Evolve towards Systems Science”, published in INCOSE Insight (2007).

The first point reflects my view of the breadth and diversity of the system sciences.  The second point reviewed the some challenges presented by John N. Warfield, who was both a pioneer in the systems engineering community and a luminary in the systems sciences community.  As a guide for the web conference, I provided a context map.

View the full-sized context map or listen to the digital audio recording.

The web conference was recorded, producing a movie that emphasizes key points on the context map.

Watch the larger 844x528px video, the original size 720x448px video, or the smaller 480x304px video hosted on coevolving.com. These were converted from the original 844x528px WMV recording.

The systems engineers and systems scientists are working towards cooperation, with the intersecting domains and interests continuing to be developed.  We’ll be meeting together again at the INCOSE International Workshop at the end of January.

2 Comments

  • Beautiful chart, David, but it’s incomplete. You didn’t Len Troncale’s amazing and important work. It’s too bad considering its considerable value for systems engineering.

  • @icanology Lynn, Any chart that could be covered in an hour teleconference would be incomplete. The bias that I have is my current focus on service systems, that draws from the natural sciences but still requires a lot of research on the isomorphisms. I have to admit to not spending enough time on Len Troncale’s work — I am doing more research into ecology right now. Len will be at the INCOSE International Workshop with us in a few weeks, so he can speak for himself with the systems engineering community.


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