Complexity in the real world

What is complexity and why do we need to think about it? After reading Aaron's last post I realised that it had been quite some time since I'd looked at complexity and that my knowledge of what it is and why it's important to keep in mind had started to fade. Luckily, the next day someone suggested I read the UK government 'do tank' the Design Council's Transformation Design paper. The paper proposes using a human-centred design approach, usually employed for commercial products, in producing solutions for social and economic problems. Existing solutions, such as the division of government into departmental 'silos', are based on the failing assumption that the world is complicated, that is that problems can be solved through analysis, decomposition into the pertinent variables and conditions and finally implementing a logical solution. In the Transformation Design paper, they have neatly summarised an emergent problem solving approach based on the assumption that the world is complex, that it is extremely difficult (impossible for a lot of systems) to decompose a problem into its constituent parts due to the extent of interdependence between the parts of the system and the multiplicity of viewpoints. They put forward that the best way to solve problems in a complex world is through an approach that employs collaboration between disciplines, includes regular people as part of the design team and builds into a solution the ability to adapt to change.

I hope this sheds a little bit more light on the topic. Chris might be able to offer an explanation of some modelling-based approaches to dealing with complexity.