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Exploring the Science of Complexity: Ideas and Implications for Development and Humanitarian Efforts

Our mental models for change and service are often very simple, if they exist at all. Often they are driven by narratives that we share with others who support our cause, but they may not reflect how the world actually works. In Exploring the Science of Complexity (89 page PDF), Ramalingam, Jones, Reba, and Young do a fantastic job of opening our minds to reach beyond these narratives and to see things from a systems perspective. We often hear the word "complex" and immediately think that means "difficult". But in fact, seeing our work from the perspective of complexity can often make it much easier! This paper will show you how that's the case. It looks at ten major concepts in the field of complexity and applies them to humanitarian work. These include: interconnection, feedback processes, emergent behaviors, nonlinearity, the role of initial conditions, and others. They make four delightful recommendations to us as practitioners: adopt an openness to new ideas, respect the limitations of our approaches, practice humility about our efforts, and show courage when the implications of complexity are revealed to us. Posted: 9/15/09; 6:19:45 PM #

Foster a More "Giving" Identity to Rouse Donors and Volunteers

Alice LaPlante previews some upcoming research on the role of "identity" in giving decisions. In Foster a More "Giving" Identity to Rouse Donors and Volunteers, she makes it clear that we have to take into account the performance and creation of people's sense of themselves in our fundraising strategies. Yet another piece of research showing how much we have to learn about how our stakeholders relate to each other, rather than just to us. Posted: 9/15/09; 6:08:05 PM #

Value Chain Analysis in Ethiopia

I've been teaching the use of logic models for many years and more recently have been helping organizations who are interested in integrated evaluation methods to expand their logic models into frameworks for metrics, especially through the use of Value Chain Analysis. Carlo Kuepers and Agnes Luz explain how this tool was applied to their work with farmers in Ethiopia. It's a short article, but if you are interested in connecting and valuing the various activities of your projects, this would be worth a quick review. Posted: 9/15/09; 5:49:59 PM #

What Value do Users Derive from Social Networking Applications?

Larry Neale and Rebekah Russell-Bennett have a paper in the latest issue of First Monday asking this question: What value do users derive from social networking applications? This is a qualitative, exploratory study, so I would use it to develop further tests of your own, rather than make large scale extrapolations. One important insight appears to be that social networking tools need to be functional. Social or emotional value both contribute to adoption, but functionality is key. Another insight that seems useful to those of us who are looking for a magic bullet or overarching generalization, is that there are no global solutions as to what sort of tools will be widely encouraged and used. Finally, there is an intriguing recommendation that we invest primarily in understanding our users, given how many tools display "symmetry" - where the same tool can encourage some users and discourage others. Posted: 9/15/09; 5:44:20 PM #