The LSE Complexity Group Network
| Membership is open to both individuals and organisations. Corporate members will have access to the findings of the Complexity Programme projects, after the business partners, but before publication. They will also be invited to inter-organisational workshops with our business partners and will have priority in becoming involved in individual projects with the Complexity Group. | |
| Fees | |
Corporate members £5,000 p.a. |
|
| Who We Are | |
The Complexity Group at the London School of Economics has been working since 1995 on the theory of complex social systems and its application to practical problems with several business partners. They include BT, Citibank (New York), GlaxoSmithKline, the Humberside TEC (Training & Enterprise Council), Legal & General, Mondragon Cooperative Corporation (Basque Country), Norwich Union, Rolls-Royce (Aerospace & Marine), Shell (International and Shell Internet Works), the World Bank (Washington DC), AstraZeneca and several companies in the Aerospace industry. Our business partners take an active role in research projects and help fund the Complexity Research Programme. Our academic network includes the following disciplines: anthropology, biology, economics, information systems, mathematics, physics, psychology, sociology and philosophy. The Group has strong links with the Santa Fe Institute, NECSI and PLEXUS in the USA and with several universities and research institutions world-wide. The Group Director, Eve Mitleton-Kelly, is also Coordinator of Links with Industry and Government for the new European Network of Excellence Exystence, funded by the EU, which started in April 2002. She is also a Director of the Complexity Society, a UK-based Network of Networks on complex systems. The Complexity Research Programme includes three completed (a - c), and one current (d) research projects funded by the EPSRC (Engineering & Physical Science Research Council). The four projects are studying: (a & b) The relationship between information systems development and the changing business process. Legacy Systems Project. (c) The initial product definition stage in the Aerospace industry, focusing on trust, creativity and risk in inter-organisational relationships. The Aerospace Project was a joint effort with Warwick Manufacturing Group and Cranfield Ecotechnology Centre. The business partners included BAE Systems, DERA, GEC/Marconi, HS Marston, Hunting Engineering, Lucas, Rolls-Royce and Smith Industries. (d) The conditions (social, cultural, technical, political and economic) that will facilitate the emergence of a new organisational form or new ways of organising. The ICoSS Project will apply the principles of complexity to co-create with our business partners, company-specific frameworks, to help them co-evolve with a constantly changing environment. The ICoSS project is the largest EPSRC award given to the LSE and was given the highest priority by the examining Panel. The business partners are BT’s Brightstar, Shell Internet Works (incubators of new businesses), Norwich Union, Rolls-Royce Marine (recent mergers) and Mondragon Co-operative Corporation in the Basque Country (a non-traditional organisational form). Seminars, colloquia, workshops, conferences on strategy, complexity and organisational learning: a full list is available on http://lse.ac.uk/complexity . The seminar series, for the business community, started in 1992 and has attained a high reputation for inviting academic and business speakers whose work is state-of-the-art. Eve Mitleton-Kelly is the Coordinator for Links with Industry and Government of the new EU-funded Network of Excellence (NoE) on Complex Systems, known as Exystence, which started in April 2002. The NoE includes most academics in Europe working on complex systems and was founded by 21 European academic institutions. As from January 2003, the LSE Complexity Group will organise and host seminars and colloquia at the LSE and coordinate seminars in Brussels, Paris, Rome and Bonn, on behalf of Exystence. http://www.complexityscience.org |
|
| What We Offer | |
| Members will be invited to discuss the concepts in depth, and to apply them in their own organisational context. They will also be invited to share the findings of work-in-progress. This will be organised through frequent afternoon meetings and annual whole day workshops.
Corporate Members will be given priority in undertaking individual projects with the Complexity Group, on a consultancy basis, to introduce complexity thinking to senior management and help them apply it to particular practical concerns. We can also build models and simulations to support those activities. Members can attend Network meetings free of charge. |
|
| What We Expect | |
| We will expect the members to contribute in discussions and share ideas and experiences that will help develop the network and complexity group identity. | |
| Further Details | |
Slavica Savic at the London School of Economics, Houghton Street, London WC2A 2AE. Tel 020 7955 6308; fax: 020 799 6565, email Complexitygroup@lse.ac.uk
|
|