Complexity Theory Quotes

“Complex life was merely the recent froth over a great vat of prokaryotes feeding and dividing and dying.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, Children of Ruin

“Compared to ecosystems and some species, corporations are very fragile entities indeed.”
― Paul Gibbons, The Science of Successful Organizational Change: How Leaders Set Strategy, Change Behavior, and Create an Agile Culture

“All the evidence from the science of complexity says that given certain clear parameters...communities or teams will become self-organizing. They will be attracted to certain flowing states of organization natural to the people who make them up. In complexity theory, these flowing states are poetically called strange attractors. ...

A work team made up of collaborating individuals would...have, if you could measure and plot creativity, failure, and success, a strange attractor that depicted the edges and patterns of the team's behavior. This pattern would be constrained by the forces operating within the company and outside in the market, but it would be most affected by the focus and vision of the team. A strong vision and purpose acts as a kind of strange attractor, allowing individual creativity while acting as a natural constraint to behavior that is detrimental to the team. Without repressive rules, then, a cohesive team with a strong sense of its mission, ethics, and tasks can be allowed a lot of leeway to develop its own approach to problems.”
― David Whyte, The Heart Aroused: Poetry and the Preservation of the Soul in Corporate America

“Simple problems are the hardest to solve because they require common sense—something not so common. Beneath every simple problem lies a complex one trying to wiggle out.”
― Abraham Varghese

“Complexity in martial arts is the key to ineffectiveness.”
― Tamerlan Kuzgov

“Complexity in martial arts: key to ineffectiveness.”
― Tamerlan Kuzgov