Coevolving Innovations

How do systems — systems sciences, systems thinking, systems practice — fit into the way that individuals and social groups behave?  The connections between the development of general systems theory and interdisciplinary work stretches back into the mid-20th century.  In the Science of Synthesis, Debora Hammond traced the history of researchers bridging over disciplinary boundaries.

Early in the fall of 1954, four of the distinguished CASBS [Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences] fellows — Bertalanffy, Boulding, Gerard, and Rapoport — sat together at lunch discussing their mutual interest in theoretical frameworks relevant to the study of different kinds of systems, including physical, technological, biological, social, and symbolic systems. According to Boulding, someone suggested they form a society to foster interdisciplinary research on a general theory of complex systems, and thus the idea for the Society for General Systems Research (SGSR) was born.  [Hammond 2003, p. 9]

Initiated by a grant from the Ford Foundation in 1954, the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences continues today, having joined Stanford University in 2008.  The luminaries founding the Society for General Systems Research – Ludwig von Bertalanffy, Kenneth Boulding, Ralph Gerard and Anatol Rapoport — continue to be held in high regard today, in the International Society for the Systems Sciences (as the society was renamed in 1998).

The CASBS ties surfaced during the research leading to the report “John Bowlby – Rediscovering a systems scientist“, authored by Gary Metcalf.  On a visit to the Bowlby archives in the Wellcome Library in London, I served as a research assistant to Gary.  One artifact that we uncovered was the list of CASBS fellows for the 1957-58 years, with blue pen and red pencil markups by Bowlby.  Over 50 years later, many of those fellows have become prominent public figures, famous in a variety of ways.  Here’s my transcription of that original document.  In the case some of the names seem only vaguely familiar, I’ve appended a column on biographical sources as a reference.

<< begin paste >>  Read more... (2010 words, 1 image, estimated 8:02 mins reading time)

I’m not an ecologist.  However, my interests in the systems sciences has connected me to the research originating with the Resilience Alliance.  I decided to make time to educate myself in the current research presented at Resilience 2011: The Second International Science and Policy Conference, at Arizona State University in Tempe.

The conference program is available online — including video, slides, and abstracts.

As an additional contribution to learning, I’ve posted digests of the talks that I’ve attended on the Coevolving Commons.  I habitually type notes into my laptop during meetings.  Some people find these digests helpful, to gain a high-level appreciation of content before committing more time to watching a video, or reading an article.  (On the digest pages for plenary talks, I’ve provided links back to speakers’ videos and slides).

Attending a 5-day meeting in person enables a rich immersion of ideas in a domain.  I got to see, up close, some people whose work is worth knowing about, including …

• Buzz Holling, in a panel with Kathleen Sutcliffe and Andrew King on “Resilience in Business“;
• Brian Walker, increasing scientific rigour, introducing “Resilience Propositions on Trial” (in advance of a later panel);
• Garry Peterson, leading a panel on “Social Ecological Regime Shifts and Transformation“;
• Martin Scheffer, providing background history as “Resilience Revisited“;
• Joe Tainter, framing complexity in human societies in “Resources and Societies: Past and Futures“; and
• Elinor Ostrom — a Nobel prize laureate in economics — on “Thinking about the Future: A Social-Ecological Systems Approach to Sustainability“

… plus many other talks over the four days.  (I caught a plane eastbound on the fifth day, so I missed a few plenary talks).  Read more... (337 words, 2 images, estimated 1:21 mins reading time)

I, like many other Torontonians, went on a Jane’s Walk yesterday, an annual event honouring the legacy and ideas of Jane Jacobs.  DY and I joined the Regent Park Revitalized walk, scheduled for 2 hours in length.  With tour leaders from Toronto Community Housing (the legacy property owner), The Daniels Corporation (the developer leading the public-private partnership), and volunteers from the Regent Park community, we spent over 3 hours immersed in experiencing the transition-in-progress of a 28 hectare (69-acre) neighbourhood.

Catching up my reading, I was intrigued by “Jane Jacobs: Honoured in the breach“, an article by Stephen Wickens in the Saturday Globe and Mail.  Jane Jacobs had contacted him in 2005 to acknowledge some fact-finding on the right track, elaborating that “lot sizes and building heights often matter less to density than the land used for driving and parking”.  This people-centered view of city life was typical of Jacobs.  Wickens writes:

While her ideas are cited continually in discussions of urban affairs, their realization is arguably as far off as ever – in part because her followers are finding there are no shortcuts through her complex system of thought. [...]

She had no time for ideology – left, right or whatever – and felt that many who invoke her name “cherry-pick ideas to suit their purposes.”

I was fortunate to meet Jacobs in a session of the ISSS 2000 meeting in Toronto (and was invited to her house for wine and cheese, afterwards).  She was truly a systems thinker, with a system of ideas and view on problematiques (systems of problems) that is both commonsense and complex.

On the Globe and Mail web site is a video clip of Harvard economist Edward Glaeser saying that Jane Jacobs got it wrong.  Read more... (758 words, 3 images, estimated 3:02 mins reading time)

In February, I returned to Finland to teach the Systemic Thinking for Planners and Designers CS0005 course in the master’s program in Creative Sustainability at Aalto University.  I had previously blogged about teaching and learning from the Systemic Thinking for Sustainable Communities CS0004 course in October.  The February course was again intensive, this time on a Friday-Tuesday-Friday schedule.

All of the course content is available as open source in a directory at http://coevolving.com/aalto/201102-cs0005/ .  Here’s a map outlining the course.

The style of the classes again centered on a list of references from which students could select according to personal interests, supplemented by lectures outlined with context maps.  The course outline was provided as long form text that evolved online during the week.  Written responses from students were most frequently posted on public blogs, with notifications and responses on the Systemicists Forum on the Systems Community of Inquiry, with separate threads for Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, and the final essays.

The first lecture for CS0005 was a quick review of the first topic for CS0004 in October, foundations for a systems approach.  This turned out to be a worthwhile activity, as the students (and my co-instructors!) had mulled over the basic ideas of systems for four months, resulting in more reflection and questions than I was expecting.

This background in the first lecture continued with a discussion of method frameworks.  Read more... (884 words, 10 images, estimated 3:32 mins reading time)

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.  Read more... (202 words, 3 images, estimated 48 secs reading time)

Since 2008, I’ve been conducting research on service systems and the systems sciences, with my core collaborators Gary Metcalf, Jennifer Wilby and Kyoichi (Jim) Kijima.  As senior members of the International Society for the Systems Sciences, we’ve been working towards a more formal association with the International Council on Systems Engineering, and with the Systems Science Working Group in particular.  Our organizations came together for the first time in the INCOSE International Symposium 2010, in Chicago.

For the International Symposium, our contribution was a panel on our progress in researching service systems and the systems sciences, with position papers and presentation slides discussed in Chicago in July.  After that meeting, a summary of the session was reported in an article published in INCOSE Insight in October.

The publications page on this web site includes links to the:

• July 2010 abstract, outline and presentation slides; and the
• October 2010 article in INCOSE Insight.

Our core group will be continuing our research into 2011, with a two-day co-learning workshop at the International Workshop 2011 in Phoenix, Arizona.  The linkages between the systems sciences and systems engineering should continue to develop.