Resources
Publications
CANet Newsletters
May 2008: Building a Bridge of Value Creation for Research and Practice 
December 2007: Complexity at Work
August 2007: Focus on Faculty: Accelerating Internal & External Market Uptake
December 2006: 1st Annual CANet Conference
August 2006: Spotlight on Agent-Based Modeling
March 2006: Complexity Applied to Information Aggregation
September 2005: CANet Launch
CANet Member Publications
CANet provides members a forum to share new ideas, models, approaches, methods and practices with the wider CANet community. In addition to live events, this portion of the website is dedicated to member publications and white papers.
Seeing Business Valuation through a Glass, Darkly: New Insights from Complexity Theory in Business Valuation & Analysis
--Tim Vlams, StrategyScape
Tim welcomes comments or questions, especially regarding the BiTri analysis framework, the physics-based mass/energy/momentum framework or the logistic growth function framework. Tim's personal interest lies in the application of the methodologies to high growth business valuations. He would also be particularly interested in hearing from those in finance who would be interested in collaborating to work on real world applications. To contact Tim, send him an email at: tvlamis@vlamis.com.
Recommended Readings
Practical/Applied Readings
Complex Systems Across Disciplines: An Introduction
Uzzi, Brian with Luis Amaral
Management Science, July 2007.
Harnessing the wisdom of crowds – case study.
Velasquez G and Odem P.
SPE-95292-PP. Presented at the 2005 Society of Petroleum Engineers Program Annual Technical Conference and Exhibition in Dallas, TX, 9-12 October 2005.
The Hidden Power of Social Networks
Cross, R. & Parker, A.
Harvard Business School Press, 2004.
Conceptual Readings
Critical Mass: How One Thing Leads to Another
Ball, P.
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2004.
The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference
Gladwell, M.
Back Bay Books/Little, Brown and Company, 2002.
How to build a better network.
Uzzi B.
Harvard Business Review, December 2005.
Chaos: Making a New Science
Gleick, J.
Penguin Books, New York. (1987)
The Origin of Wealth: Evolution, Complexity, and the Radical Remaking of Economics
Beinhocker, E.D.
Harvard Business School Press, 2006.
New Rules for the New Economy: 10 Radical Strategies for a Connected World
Kelly, K.
Penguin Books, New York. (1998)
Theoretical Readings
Complexification: Explaining a Paradoxical World Through the Science of Surprises
Casti, J.L.
HarperCollins, 1994.
Complexity: The Emerging Science at the Edge of Order and Chaos.
Waldrop, M. Mitchell.
Simon & Schuster: 1992.
Complex Networks - Augmenting the Framework for the Study of Complex Systems
Amaral, L.A.N. & Ottino, J.M.
European Physical Journal, 38, 147-162. (2004)
Complex Systems
Ottino, J.M.
AIChE Journal, February 2003, Vol. 49., No. 2. (2003)
Complex Systems - A New Paradigm for the Integrative Study of Management, Physical, and Technological Systems
Uzzi, Brian with Luis Amaral
Management Science, Vol. 53, No. 7, July 2007.
Hidden Order: How Adaptation Builds Complexity
Holland, J.H.
Perseus Books, Cambridge, MA. (1995)
Machine Learning Meets Agent-Based Modeling: When Not to Go to a Bar
Rand, W.
Proceedings of Agent 2006
Sync: The Emerging Science of Spontaneous Order
Strogratz, S.
Hyperion Books, 2003.
Theories of Communication Networks
Monge, P.R. & Contractor, N.S.
Oxford University, 2003.
Thinking Like a Wolf, A Sheep, or a Firefly: Learning Biology Through Constructing and Testing Computational Theories - an Embodied Modeling Approach
Wilensky, U. & Reisman, K.
Cognition and Instruction, 24(2), pp. 171-209. (2006)
Top 10 Books: Related to Complexity Science
Comments provided by Jean Egmon, Director of the Complexity in Action Network.
Ball, Philip. Critical Mass: How One Thing Leads to Another. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2004.
Comments:
Ball, a science writer, says his book is about the “physics of society,” i.e., applying the concepts from physics to the social, political and economic sciences. Those who believe the biological sciences are, or should be, the dominant scientific framework for understanding complex systems may find themselves wanting to refute Ball’s premise. However, in the spirit of the true interdisciplinary nature and common patterns of complexity across these systems, this book is one of the best reads for a tour de force through complexity. Being a science writer, he takes what Kaufman, Holland, and others talk about in their terms and translates them to a more approachable and applied, example-filled offering, while not watering down the theories and research behind it.
Beinhocker, Eric D. The Origin of Wealth: Evolution, Complexity, and the Radical Remaking of Economics. Harvard Business School Press, 2006.
Comments:
One of the better books on directly applying complexity to business and economics. Beinhocker traces the history of wealth creation in the world using an evolutionary and complex adaptive system framework. He then discusses current research in economics, strategy, organization design, and other business areas that is turning our industrial age assumptions about how business works on their heads.
Beyer, Hugh and Holtblatt, Karen. Contextual Design: Defining Customer-Centered Systems. Academic Press, 1998.
Comments:
While this book is not about complexity per se, it is a wonderful book about design and taking complex contexts into account when designing systems. This book will have some nice implications for those who wish to understand the role and limits of “design” when it comes to complex systems.
Casti, John L. Complexificiation: Explaining a Paradoxical World Through the Science of Surprise. HarperCollins, 1994.
Comments:
I especially recommend Chapters 1 and 7 for good conceptual discussion the merely complicated versus the complex and why surprise emerges. The entire book brings in examples from across domains and particularly emphasizes paradox and emergence.
Gladwell, Malcolm. The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference. Back Bay Books/Little, Brown and Company, 2002.
Comments:
This has to be one of the most popular books in business and academia in the last 10 years! Gladwell, a wonderful writer, focuses on the emergence and epidemics of social ideas. While he refers to networks, he does little to refer to complexity directly, though the whole phenomenon he explains with one vivid example after another is explained by complexity science. Chapter 2 is particularly helpful in thinking about roles in social networks and how to spread ideas by tapping into these roles. Chapter 3 is about making the message essentially the “attractor” of energy in complex systems. His reference in Chapter 4 to the broken windows theory and its application in New York is a great example of how to apply theory to practice and how a small design in the system has large ripple effects. If you want to “hook” people on complexity and make them want to read more, this is probably the book to do it, especially if they do not know much about complexity science and are interested in social epidemics in marketing and trend creation.
Handy, Charles. The Age of Paradox. Harvard Business School Press, 1994.
Comments:
This is not a book about complexity explicitly. Charles Handy, who I picture as a Peter Drucker-figure of England, presents some intriguing ideas and ways of thinking through complex, paradoxical situations. A really nice ramp up for complexity thinking.
Kelly, Kevin. Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems, and the Economic World. Addison-Wesley, 1994.
Comments:
This book is bold and well written. It will be especially appealing to those who want to think about “designing complexity” into things. Kelly especially nods to biological aspects of design in complex systems. The last chapter alone, “The Nine Laws of God,” is worth a read to entertain possible design and adaptation principles.
Moore, Geoffrey A. Dealing with Darwin: How Great Companies Innovate At Every Phase of their Evolution. Portfolio/Penguin, 2005.
Comments:
This book presents a very useful framework for thinking through the life cycle of companies and what innovation looks like at each stage. What I find an especially useful bridge between complexity and business is the discussion around a complex systems business model compared to a volume operations model, each requiring its own approach to innovation. Business books have not largely pointed out the vast difference in implications of these models, nor have they credited complexity as appropriate for some business models. Very good read.
Strogatz, Steven. Sync: The Emerging Science of Spontaneous Order. Hyperion Books, 2003.
Comments:
The book jacket describes this book as “…a tour de force of science and prose, Sync reveals the hidden but beautiful order that governs the rhythms of nature and the rhythms of ourselves.” That is a good description of the book. It seems to work backwards from the emergent phenomena we see when we say something is “in sync” to show where networks, rules and self-organization fit into the system. Chapter 2 is especially good at laying out his theory.
Watts, Duncan J. Six Degrees: The Science of a Connected Age, W. W. Norton & Co.: 2003.
Comments:
Watts does a nice journey through network theory in a very approachable way with lots of examples, including historic. He also provides enough of the math and science to show how he got there, and he makes that accessible as well.
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