Integration and Implementation Insights
A community blog and repository of resources for improving research impact on complex real-world problems
By Gabriele Bammer
This is part of a series of occasional “synthesis blog posts” drawing together perspectives on related topics across i2Insights contributions.
How can different disciplines and practitioners enhance the ability to understand and manage unknown unknowns, also referred to as deep uncertainty?
Seventeen blog posts have addressed these issues, covering:
By Hamilton Carvalho
What is it about complex social systems that keeps reproducing old problems, as well as adding new ones? How can public policy move away from what I call the Mencken Syndrome (in reference to a quotation from American journalist Henry Mencken) – that is, continually proposing clear and simple solutions to complex social problems – that are also wrong!
With this goal in mind, I have compiled a list of fifteen major characteristics of complex social systems based on the system dynamics and complexity sciences literatures, as well as my own research.
Susan van ‘t Klooster and Marjolijn Haasnoot
Change can be expected, envisioned and known, and even created, accelerated or stopped. But change does not always follow a linear and predictable path, nor is it always controllable. Novelty and surprise are inescapable features of life. Non-linear change can involve threats or opportunities.
Although it defines the world we live in, who we are, the outlooks we have and what we do, we often do not relate to non-linear change in a meaningful way. What is holding us back from engaging with it? How do we deal with non-linear change? And what are promising ways forward?
Why is thinking about and anticipating non-linear change difficult?
Generally speaking, non-linearity is difficult to define and conceptualize, because there are multiple interacting forces at the intersection of many domains, manifesting on different spatial and temporal scales and many different actors and (often conflicting) perspectives are involved.