Author: Rick Nason

Publisher: Rotman-UTP Publishing

Comments:The author, from Dalhousie University in Canada, offers a paradigm shift for business away from the traditional modes of compartmentalising problems and solutions. Principles of “complexity thinking” empower managers to understand, correlate, and explain a diverse range of business phenomena. Complex and complicated are not interchangeable terms.  Understanding the differences between simple, complicated, and complex processes and systems, enable professionals to identify, understand, deal with, and exploit complexity in the business and investment realm. The difference, widely accepted by the scientific community, is still unfamiliar in business, but might be usefully applied to a number of different businesses or situations. While complicatedness can usually be solved, for example by breaking down the problem into elements, it is predictable though often wasteful. Complexity, on the other hand, is non-linear, random, and interconnected. It requires another approach.