What's New | ValueNetworks.com

Brian Arthur Recipient of Lagrange Prize

Fri, 02 Jan 2009 00:47:10 -0500

Increasing returns pioneer has a new book

Brian Arthur, friend and supporter of value networks, conveys two exciting bits of news. He and Princeton mathematician Yakov Sinai are both inaugural winners of the Lagrange Prize for research on the science of complexity. (First reported last May in Science). They will receive $110,000 each from Italy’s CRT Foundation.

The second piece of news is that he has a new book being released in August 2009: The Nature of Technology: What it is and How it Evolves. It is now available for preorder. It has been over ten years since The Economy as an Evolving Complex System II, with Steven Durlauf and David Lane, published in Addison-Wesley's Series in the Sciences of Complexity.

Brian is an economist credited with influencing and describing the modern theory of increasing returns. His best known book is his 1994 Increasing Returns and Path Dependence in the Economy. He also is one of the early economic researchers in the emerging complexity field. His comments on complexity are particularly relevant to the value network perspective. From a 1999 conversation with Joe Jaworksi:

Complexity theory is really a movement of the sciences. Standard sciences tend to see the world as mechanistic. That sort of science puts things under a finer and finer microscope. In biology the investigations go from classifying organisms to functions of organisms, then organs themselves, then cells, and then organelles, right down to protein and enzymes, metabolic pathways, and DNA. This is finer and finer reductionist thinking. The movement that started complexity looks in the other direction. It’s asking, how do things assemble themselves? How do patterns emerge from these interacting elements? Complexity is looking at interacting elements and asking how they form patterns and how the patterns unfold. It’s important to point out that the patterns may never be finished. They’re open-ended.

It is good to know that Brian's excellent work continues to be appreciated and supported in the scientific community.

VNA and Hastily Formed Networks

Thu, 01 Jan 2009 12:22:38 -0500

Hoping for the best and planning for the worst

As network science, social networks and network analysis expand rapidly and value networks become the lingua franca of business, economics and society, novel network patterns continuously reveal themselves. They deserve attention, thinking, visualization and analysis. Some are new and others are continuously evolving. They are central to knowledge, productivity, customer delight, resilient ecosystems and overall business excellence.

One interesting network patterns is referred to as Hastily Formed Networks (HFN). They arise, emerge in situations with the following properties (from the Naval Postgraduate School) –

Genuine surprise. The precipitating event is in no known category.
No advance planning, training, or positioning.
Chaos. Everyone is overwhelmed. People are frantic and panicky.
Totally insufficient resources. Available resources overwhelmed.
Multi-agency response rqr’d.
Groups with no prior reason to collaborate.
Moving from a state of "coexistence" to a state of "collaboration."
Distributed response rqr’d.
No command-and-control structure.
Total absence of infrastructure.
Makeshift infrastructures need to be deployed quickly.

Most of the attention and network research for HFNs has concerned terror attacks and natural disasters. However, we have all been faced with these specific properties in business at one time or another. You may expect these conditions in the future with 100% certainty.

Interestingly, and unfortunately, when faced with these properties, training, know how, and expertise quickly reverts to conditioned behaviors. This was tragically manifest in 9-11 with the utter collapse of interagency communications. Katrina had the identical failures and added problems with institutional, governmental and infrastructural intransigence of the Governor, Mayor, FEMA, etc. Many specifc decisions were made that actually impeded the formation of hastily formed networks. A comprehensive value network analysis would have illuminated HFNs opportunities. This, in turn, allows comprehensive response at the local level, for example.

Too often, multi-agency network patterns and configurations pursue ‘unified’ architectures and deployments. This is a deadly mistake. The more these legacy-style architectural practices are institutionalized, the more rigid they become. In turn, the more they are taken for granted, the more resources are required to managing them!

Rather, interagency collaborations in the face of the properties above are best supported as complex adaptive systems. They cannot be managed, only served. A basic value network analysis would quickly illustrate this canon of complexity. To create a resilient, sustainable and thriving inter-agency ecosystem that consistently meets and far exceeds the demands of unknown circumstances, value network analysis is an essential tool.

A interagency value network analysis in NYC, for example, would have illustrated the profound interdependence of the many rapid response agencies and ameliorated the internecine communication faults, political intransigence and network defects. Value network mindset, visualization and analysis helps achieve mastery of complexity, network resilience, robust ecologies and continuous interdependence. In short, value networks and specifically VNA allow organizations to, ‘hope for the best and plan for the worst.’

VNA Professional Edition™

Tue, 30 Dec 2008 15:32:02 -0500

Optimzing Business Performance

VNA Professional Edition™ is your one-stop-shop for social network analysis (SNA), organizational network analysis (ONA) and, of course, value network analysis, VNA. It is offered in a secure, hosted software as a service (SaaS) environment.

VNA Professional Edition™ is optimized for your existing Microsoft Office suite. Network data collection and management are handled with ease in Excel. All maps, charts, analytics, reports are created and editable with the popular Office products Word, PowerPoint and Visio.

VNA Professional Edition™ introduces entirely new network visualization and analytic capabilities. In minutes you are able to capture, see, probe, merge, store, retrieve, change, print, syndicate, analyze, share and optimize social, organizational and value networks.

VNA Professional Edition™ scales from the smallest personal networks to teams, complete departments, the enterprise, complex supply networks, entire economic regions and complete civil society ecosystems. The maps and analytics are easy to work with, powerful to communicate and instantly drive higher levels of network understanding.

VNA Professional Edition™ furnishes one button 'Load and Go' network analysis. In seconds it generates four comprehensive and attractive social, organizational and value network flow paths, indicators, metrics and narrative:

1. Complete, animated PowerPoint presentation;
2. Detailed Auto Layout Visio diagrams;
3. Summary "dashboard" report of network indicators;
4. Complete 25 page report with over 50 network and value indicators;
5. Comprehensive narrative in plain English of the network dynamics.

These deliverables are ready for printing and sharing immediately. They are fully editable and suitable for emailing, documents, Websites, annual reports, research, and business optimization plans.

VNA Professional Edition™ allows you to create and share hundreds of maps and reports. Annual subscription sign-up is fast, easy and low-cost. You will be mapping in minutes. Included is the comprehensive online Value Networks Help Library, 24/7 support and access to the worldwide value networks learning and practitioners community.

Microsoft Office^®, Excel^®, Word^®, PowerPoint^® and Visio^®are all registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation.

What's New | ValueNetworks.com

Brian Arthur Recipient of Lagrange Prize

See Also

VNA and Hastily Formed Networks

See Also

VNA Professional Edition™

See Also