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Business today remains tethered to a paradigm that is long out of date. This mindset assumes that universal answers exist: Businesses can simply apply compartmentalized operations and follow linear paths to success. Experienced managers know business doesn’t work this way. Where should they turn?
In this groundbreaking book, Doug Garnett shows how complexity science reveals a new understanding of how business works that is as useful on the front lines as in the C-suite. This discipline—the study of behaviors in highly interconnected, adapting systems dominated by emergence—is revolutionizing fields from biology and economics to psychology and artificial intelligence. Recognizing a business as a complex adaptive system operating within other complex systems changes our perspective on everything from core concepts of demand, profit, and strategy to the nature of business success. Managers who grasp the order hidden within complexity discover not only a powerful new understanding of their role but also potential for dramatic contributions to success.
The Complexity Paradigm features vivid examples ranging from local coffee shops to major corporations like PepsiCo, Boeing, Mattel, Starbucks, and General Motors as well as tech giants such as Apple and AT&T. Grounding eye-opening theory in the realities of business, this foundational look at complexity offers deep insight and value for practitioners and students alike.
— Lisl Macdonald, Spring and Atlas
Using the findings from complexity science and organizational theory, Garnett demonstrates that no single business model fits all situations. Businesses operate within changing environments, and dynamic businesses receive constant feedback from within the organization, and from the environment in which it operates. He also provides guidance on the new complexity science evaluation methods that will be required by dynamic businesses. The book will provide valuable insights for both managers and researchers.
— Michael Bamberger, co-author of Dealing with Complexity in Development Evaluation
Preface
Part I. The Complexity Paradigm
1. The Manager’s Dilemmas
2. The Managerial Paradigm and Its Crisis
3. Crisis and Revolution in Science
Part II. The Framework of Business Complexity
4. The Inherent Complexity of Business
5. Complexity’s Hidden Order
6. Interlude: Good Vibrations
7. The Manager’s Complex Role
8. Managing with Sets of Principles
9. Complex Forces
Part III. Forces of Complexity
10. The Forces of Emergence
11. The Ecosystem Exemplar
12. Interlude: PepsiCo and Indra Nooyi
13. The Human Forces of Individuals
14. The Human Forces of Groups
15. Interlude: The People of Starbucks
16. The “Tell” of Complex Behavior
17. The Forces of Instability and Exploration
18. Interlude: Lockheed’s Skunk Works
19. The Forces of Connection
20. Interlude: Ping Fu and Geomagic
21. The Forces and Misbehavior of Numbers
22. The Forces of Adaptation
Part IV. Survey of Fundamental Practices
23. Business Goals and Whole Results
24. Strategy
25. Products and Services
26. Demand
27. Outsized Influence of Individuals
28. Diversity
29. Adaptive Practices
30. Artificial Intelligence
31. Innovation
Epilogue. The Manager’s Opportunity: Do What Matters
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Notes
Index