Cause-alities

Extending "Predictive Analytics" Using Complexity Science Models -- Part 1

"Predictive Analytics" is the "next generation of data-mining" according to  Forrester Research. The promise of significant bottomline benefits is making it big business with most enterprise software vendors participating.  I believe that complexity sciences modeling has a generally unrecognized potential to play an important role in the development of this capability.

Bacterial Chemotaxis

This blog has been a little too serious and so I have prepared a "buggy" little model that you can run in your browser.  To a large extent the complexity sciences have been developed to explain natural systems.  Recently, I had the opportunity to sit in on a class about "systems biology".  As my contribution I developed a multi-scale based simulation model of Bacterial Chemotaxis. 

By multi-scale I mean that parts of the model use "Systems Dynamics" modeling and other parts are agent based. In this model each bacteria is an "agent" that encapsulates the structure that causes the chemotaxis behavior. 

Clicking on this link will open the model as a Java Applet that will run inside your browser.  I hope you enjoy running experiments on the little bacteria inside your computer  Please don't let them out!  Be sure to try the drop-down window to drill down into a bacteria and see how it's innards are constructed.

It's About Time

What's about time? Readers of this occasional blog are thinking "Yeah, its about time he posted something!" True, but not the answer I'm thinking of:)

The practice of management is about time. It is about making a decision in the present that will affect results at some time in the future. Peter Drucker used a somewhat unusual word for this in his famous tome "Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices." He wrote about the "futurity" of decisions. If you look up futurity you will mostly read about horse racing. However, the definition that I think Drucker meant is "state of the future." According to Drucker, to manage well is, in part at least, to have a good grasp of what the future state of the business system will be as a result of a decision taken today.

Strategic Planning the Complexity Sciences Way

I got a call from an old friend who was in a panic. After years of success in technical, management, and sales roles he had been assigned to --oh my God-- strategic planning!  He could not imagine a worse fate.   When I asked why he felt this way about the assignment he told me that as a strategic planner he would have no impact on the business.  Gee, and I thought that by definition a strategic planner would be highly influential!

Let's Get Statistical

When I begin working with a client that is unfamiliar with my applied view of complexity science one of the first questions they ask is "Why can't I do this with a spreadsheet?"  If you haven't read it already, here is my answer
to that one.

The second question in analytically sophisticated organizations is usually "How is this different than a multi-regression or econometric model?"  That's the subject of this post.

Cause-alities and Complexity Science

This post describes what I mean by Cause-alities and their relationship to the concepts of Complexity Science. 

My premise is that to develop actionable insights into their problems managers must map out the network of cause and effect that surrounds the problem.  When the causal structure is understood then strategies to alter the problem behavior can be developed, tested, and implemented. This is the Cause-alities paradigm.

There are a variety of reasons (some of which will become future posts) that make this much easier said than done. 

WMDs In Your Workplace

Recent events have made everyone aware of WMDs.  What you probably don't realize is that your business is overrun with them!  That's right, your business is overrun with Weapons of Mass Delusion!  What? . . .You thought WMD meant something else?

I'm talking about spreadsheet analysis.  The spreadsheet has become the most ubiquitous analytic tool in the history of mankind.  As a result it defacto sets the context and frames the thinking of nearly every company issue and decision ranging from the mundane to the strategic.

Unfortunately, the spreadsheet paradigm is a hopelessly limited and inadequate tool to describe and gain insight into the world that businesses and individuals exist.  In other words the spreadsheet is a bomb.  Nevertheless, because of their familiarity with spreadsheet software business managers and analysts nearly always couch their thinking and analysis in the "language" available through a spreadsheet.  By limiting themselves to expressing what a spreadsheet can describe business people simply miss the rich opportunities for accomplishment that exist.