At the end of February 2020, we had the opportunity to participate in a very pleasant, particularly interesting seminar promoted by a world leader in the sector of electrical and digital components, where an excellent university professor admirably illustrated COMPLEXITY THEORY and the EDGE OF CHAOS MODEL.
First a brief excursus on the difference between what is “COMPLICATED” and what is “COMPLEX”:
- COMPLICATED = cum plicum – involves linearity – the approach is analytical – explained in its folds – the typical example is a mechanism, as it can be disassembled into different parts, acting on each of them in order to seek an explanation
- COMPLEX = cum plexum – involves interconnection – the approach is systemic – it must be understood as a whole, in its entire system-organism
Then, all in one go, the illustration of the historical development of the COMPLEXITY THEORY and the practical and real-life examples that corroborate it.
Hence the principle of complexity theory that underlines the importance of creativity for any complex adaptive system: the principle defined as the “edge of chaos” according to which evolution brings complex adaptive systems (CASs) into the area between order and disorder which scholars of complexity refers to as the “edge of chaos” (Waldrop, 1992). It is the only place where life can take hold. Too much order causes death by fossilization, too much disorder causes death by disintegration. Life is in fact somewhere in between order and disorder. It is no coincidence that life on our planet started out in the primordial soup:
- in the solid state, life cannot be born: there is no movement (too much order), the molecules cannot meet to create new combinations and generate organic matter.
- it cannot even be born in the gaseous state: rarefaction is high, the probability that the molecules will meet is too low, the motion of the elementary particles is chaotic (too much disorder).
- life was born in the liquid state because fluidity allowed combinations and recombinations between the different elements of matter.
We are used to thinking about order and we are used to thinking about disorder. But we are not
used to thinking about order and disorder together. Natural systems find themselves in a situation of dynamic order, which is neither the immutable and static order nor the uncontrollable and potentially dangerous disorder of chaos.
Dynamic order is fundamental because it is precisely in this condition that we see the creation of innovation, of creativity, of life itself.
Many creative activities found in businesses emerge in this way. It is therefore necessary to abandon the idea that success comes from stability and order: life and innovation are generated on the edge of chaos – between formal and informal structures (Pascale, 1990; Stacey, 1991, 1992).
A metaphor that offers a good explanation of the edge of chaos concept is that of the wave: because upstream of the wave there is great stasis and downstream of the wave there is great chaos; it is on the crest of the wave that there is the point of maximum energy: that’s why the surfers head there.
