Open Boundaries: Creating Business Innovations Through Complexity

I am a believer that organizational systems share much with biological systems. This idea struck me on the head the first time I visited the Galapagos. That trip made it clear that adaptation can occur very quickly and that more than one form of adaptation can occur in different directions at the same time, based on the environments that exist. I am also reminded of research that I recently read suggesting that we cannot accept or remember new ideas if we have not had previous experience with them. That is why it becomes so critical to prepare for change, to ask questions from many different perspectives to create ambiguity, and to present many different environments or alternate futures to create unpredictability. OPEN BOUNDARIES is a great book to read after THE LIVING COMPANY which describes how scenario planning was developed and why Shell was the only company prepared to do well during the Arab oil embargo. Complexity thinking really succeeds when you find a win-win solution - you will come out ahead no matter what happens. Another book you should look at that uses eight steps (revolving, not linear) to develop the best possible ideal practices for key activities assuming unpredictability of many things is THE 2,000 PERCENT SOLUTION. With these three, you are well on your way to removing the stalls blocking OPEN BOUNDARIES to become THE LIVING COMPANY and to reach THE 2,000 PERCENT SOLUTIONS for future success

This book clarified views which I knew were correct, but lacked structure. Their view of business, as a biological system where innovation and progress occurs through the spontaneous interactions of individuals and groups, is a tremendous asset to anyone who values dynamic processes and thinking.

Open Boundaries represents a successful and all too rare attempt to synthesize the lessons of complexity science with the day-to-day lives of managers. Where many authors are content to describe science metaphors and leave it to the reader to draw out life's lessons, Sherman and Schultz take the opposite tack. They begin by asking what problems their readers' face and then address those problems from a perspective of complexity science and philosophy. How and what we think shapes and effects what we do. Complexity science has much to contribute to change our units of thought. Open Boundaries will change your life as a thoughtful and reflective manager -- just let it.Michael Lissack, Director, Organization Science Related Programs, New England Complex Systems Institute

Among the increasing number of books purporting to connect complexity to business, this one shines. If an organization takes nothing more than an understanding of co-evolution away from this book, they will be well served. And there is a great deal more to be mined for those organizations looking for ways to make innovation a way of life. A powerful and rigorous approach in spite of its Eurocentric underpinnings. Sherman's connection to the Santa Fe Institute combine with impressive business credentials and an encyclopedic philosophical mind to create a deep resource for exploring an exciting new way to think about business.

This book is about complexity thinking and its application to business. It explains how creativity and innovation, and overall competitiveness in business, requires an appreciation of the ways that ideas shape reality. Drawing upon the nonlinear way of thinking in science, the authors apply the concepts of chaos, complexity, complex adaptive systems, and emergence to reveal the dynamics and opportunities for achieving organizational change, adaptation, innovation and development. They seek to open up our thinking to a nonlinear, organic world in which traditional patterns of reasoning do not apply. As such, this book is at least as much about how we see the world and think as it is about innovation in organization. This is a spirited and challenging work that takes the reader into the ideas of an unpredictable, postindustrial world, going beyond the comfortable, clear-cut boundaries of linear logic.