Antifragile by Nassim Taleb has to be one of the most interesting books I have read this year. It presents a plethora of concepts that are worth discussing, and carry meaning for one's personal life, as well as for business, society, and science. From this standpoint I paraphrased and extracted some of the topics that resonated with me the most when reading the book, and put …
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GMOs, complexity, and systemic risk
There has been some good debate in a Finnish GMO-Awareness facebook group recently regarding both the pros and cons of GMOs. This has prompted me to participate as well, because I feel I have something specific to contribute to the discussion: the explanation of systemic risk. All living organisms are complex adaptive systems individually and also on an environmental and a …
How self-organisation works: An example
In my first attempt at video blogging I talk about self-organisation, which is a property of complex adaptive systems and explains how organisation and order can arise spontaneously. In self-organisation, individual entities form structures based upon simple, inherent properties that govern their interactions. For example, human social systems all operate under various …
On designing organisations
As I was doing the literature review for my MSc thesis this summer, reading about uncertainty, I got in my head the idea that I probably should check what has been written about complexity, as those two things seemed related. Little did I know what I was getting myself into. The result was some very exciting ideas and profound changes in my thinking. Getting myself familiar …
How to manage uncertainty in innovative projects
A week ago I finished the first full draft of my MSc thesis. The title is Managing uncertainty in innovative projects: The experimentation-driven approach. My basic argument is that uncertainty is essential for innovation - the more uncertain your project outcome is from the get-go, the more chances you have for creating something truly novel. Contrast this to a project where …