complexity – OPEN

Networks and complexity – a feedback loop

Just posted a review of Grouped on the Brilliant Noise blog. It is such a fascinating book, I think I could happily blog about it all week – in fact I may do… One of the insights which tickled me, was the idea that increasing amounts of information and complexity could make us more reliant on…… Continue reading Networks and complexity – a feedback loop

Networks Thinking: Adapting for Complexity

Networks Thinking: Adapting for Complexity – Antony Mayfield View more presentations from Antony Mayfield. These are the notes, slides and suggested further reading for the lecture I’m giving today at Warwick Business School as part of its Complexity, Management & Network Thinking business module entitled Networks Thinking: Adapting for Complexity. Introduction Networks became a focus…… Continue reading Networks Thinking: Adapting for Complexity

Influence: It’s complicated

Image: Streams, emergence – insert your own wry analogy here… I liked the idea that “Strength of community supersedes influence” laid out in a post by Geoff Livingston. What the post is saying is that in many ways the community is more important than a singled-out influencer, and yet a lot of effort is expended…… Continue reading Influence: It’s complicated

Customers in networks: slides and notes from ChangePlayBusinesss

ChangePlayBusiness was an unusual event, to say the least, living up to its promise to be an unconference. About 40 innovators and entrepreneurs gathered at the ICA to play a game about creating businesses, the playing of which included connecting with one another (there were a lot of interesting people) and meeting subject matter experts…… Continue reading Customers in networks: slides and notes from ChangePlayBusinesss

Embrace complexity to find simplicity

If you really want to understand networks, complexity is the place to go. Once you understand a little, you see complex adaptive systems everywhere, from traffic to the weather, and especially – if you are in my line of work – when you look at human social networks. So, people who really understand how complexity…… Continue reading Embrace complexity to find simplicity

Complexity is everywhere, so try everything at once

Image: It’s complicated (and adaptive)… Thinking about complexity again, the strategy that the best players use in complex adaptive systems use is to hedge their bets. In Brands in Networks I talked about that from the perspective of brands needing to hedge their communications, have different creative and even strategies running to give them the…… Continue reading Complexity is everywhere, so try everything at once

Why is CSR silent in social media?

“I think Richard Dawkins was sent to test us. Like fossils. And facts.” It’s not just religious fervour that facts can get in the way of – a good dose of facts and rational discussion is the best cure for disinformation and malicious rumours too. So why aren’t more CSR programmes using social media to…… Continue reading Why is CSR silent in social media?

Bureaucracies defend themselves to death.

Vested interests, protectionism, conservatism are the enemies of diversity, innovation and change. This idea has been at the heart of liberalism since John Stuart Mill wrote On Liberty. He used the example of China, a civilisation so advanced and sophisticated that it invented paper, printing and gunpowder centuries before Europeans ever got near them. Then…… Continue reading Bureaucracies defend themselves to death.

Ada Lovelace Day: Shona Brown

Suw Charman has asked people to join her today on Ada Lovelace Day, a celebration of the first computer programmer, in writing about women in technology that they admire. Now, I’m a cultural rather than a tehcnical geek, so the woman who leapt to mind that I admire most in the tech industry is Shona…… Continue reading Ada Lovelace Day: Shona Brown