Systems Dynamics Research on Complexity -- Jianguo JIA, August 4, 2002

46th Annual Meeting of the International Society for the Systems Sciences (ISSS), Shanghai, P.R. China, August 2-6, 2002.

Sunday, August 4, 2002, 2:40 p.m., Session on Systems Practice

This digest was created in real-time during the meeting, based on the speaker's presentation(s) and comments from the audience. These should not be viewed as official transcripts of the meeting, but only as an interpretation by a single individual. Lapses, grammatical errors, and typing mistakes may not have been corrected. Questions about content should be directed to the originator. These notes have been contributed by David Ing (daviding@systemicbusiness.org) at the IBM Advanced Business Institute ( http://www.ibm.com/abi ).

[only 2 of 6 papers showed up for the Systems Practice session, so the time expanded]

Presented by Jianguo Jia, with co-authors Qifan Wang, and Nong Li

Agenda:

• Intro
• Comparison on Social-Economics Systems by Santa Fe Institute and System Dynamics
• Recent research
• Method frame

History:

• System science from 1930s
• Different systems: cybernetics, ... chaos theory, system dynamics
• Complexity:
  • Santa Fe Institute
  • Systems Dynamics
  • Interactive Management theory

Santa Fe Institute perspective:

• Economy as an adaptive nonlinear network -- an evolving, complex system that anticipates, is process dependent and has structural emergence.
• Dispersed interaction
• No global controller
• Cross-cutting hierarchical organization
• Continual adaptation
• Perpetual novelty
• Out-of-equilibrium dynamics
• Uses agent-based simulation

Systems dynamics view

• High-order, multiple feedback loops
• 1950s, Club of Rome

Example: Two-industry economic evolution model.