Resources

Cases

"I found a lot of value in the case studies and this will help me identify additional opportunities and ways to apply complexity science at work."
-- CANet Member

Managed Communities of Practice Reduce the Cost of Quality

Challenge: Improve safety performance at Halliburton, a $20b/year global engineering services company

Approach: Develop networked communities of practice that focus on concrete business issues. Support each community with a full-time, non-expert broker and regional knowledge champions. Manage communities with qualitative and quantitative methods and balanced scorecards.

Results: 78% decrease in recordable injuries, 47% decrease in the cost of poor quality, and 28% increase in customer satisfaction. Time spent using the communities had a 32x return on time saved.

Complexity principle illustrated: robust dissemination

Reference:
Michael Behounek (2005) “Unleash the energy: communities of practice case study”, presented at the Complexity in Action Network, Northwestern University, April 28. http://www.northwestern.edu/nico/presentations

Team Assembly Mechanisms, Collaboration, and Performance

Academic study of Broadway musicals from 1877 to 1989

Showed that both a team’s artistic and financial performance can be modeled by three factors:

team size,
the fraction of newcomers in new project, and
the tendency of incumbents to repeat previous collaborations

References:
Roger Guimerà, Brian Uzzi, Jarrett Spiro, and Luís A. Nunes Amaral (2005) “Team assembly mechanisms determine collaboration network structure and team performance,“ Science, 308(5722):697–702, April 29

Brian Uzzi (2005) “Complexity & creativity: The small world problem,” presented at the Complexity in Action Network, Northwestern University, April 28. http://www.northwestern.edu/nico/presentations

Emergent Properties of Sales Optimization

Challenge: Increase soda sales at thousands of convenience stores

Approach: Allow stores to pursue their own marketing and sales strategy for a period of time. Collect sales results and normalize for store format, neighborhood household income, traffic, customer age, and population density. Identify the best performing stores, determine their marketing and sales practices, and disseminate those practices to similar stores.

Complexity principle illustrated: emergent behavior

References:
Daniel Diermeier (2006) “Six-degree management,” presented at the Complexity in Action Network, Northwestern University, February 9

Paul Schoemaker and Robert Gunther (2006) “The wisdom of deliberate mistakes,” Harvard Business Review, June