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Perspective hard to grasp for many folks so that they abandon it as too
esoteric.

In this Guide & Website, we have deliberately sharpened and
narrowed some of the terms used in Complexity Theory to make the

underlying ideas easier to grasp and apply in the business context.

As a start, there are few ideas used in this Guide that are absolutely
central to understanding all that follows:

● A system is an agglomeration of agents/actors (employees,
partners) that takes inputs and generates outputs in the pursuit
of a system-wide goal. A business system is operationally

bounded but the boundaries are permeable allowing energy
(revenues, costs, funds, ideas) to cross from and to the context.

● The context is the multi-layered social and economic
environment. Though referred to elsewhere as a 'system', in this
Guide, we use the term context as it does not share
characteristics with a system; the context is not necessarily

bounded and it is not goal-directed. It simply IS!

● The relationship between the Context and Business Systems is
ecological, in that systems are embedded actors in the

context. Simply put, a firm is an agent in the context, just as
you and I as individuals are also agents in the context. The
context sets the conditions the firm must adapt to if it is to

survive and the actions of the firm can change the context by
modifying it. When the context changes all the embedded
systems must adapt or die.

There is a tendency, when applying complexity constructs to business,
to treat context and the embedded systems as impacted in similar
ways. That is not helpful. All the complexity constructs act in the

context. Some of the complexity constructs appear to act inside
systems, but this can be misleading. Systems are goal-directed entities;

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©Business Games Works 2018 (Version 1)