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The most important work on EA and applied System Theory today."  "Makes EA more powerful, coherent and usable." "I read and regularly refer… way beyond any other EA/system engineering/human factors/systems theory resource." "I just want to tell you how much I appreciate your musings on systems…  exceptionally useful".

This blog aims to build upon last week's three part series entitled 13 Staging Posts of Learning and Development. We'd like to lift out four staging posts of particular significance. These four staging posts consolidate our theory of change; the framework within which we guide strategic change, implement practice, create a sustainable legacy and evaluate impact.

The Consilience Project is developing a body of social theory and analysis that explains and seeks solutions to the unique challenges we face today. It focuses on the deeper generator functions beneath the world's major problems, drawing on the best of social theory while showing where existing theories and institutions are no longer adequate to fix the current problem landscape. The aim of the project is to help catalyze a cultural enlightenment that will develop a new set of shared values and capacities adequate to the needs of our time.

In the first of his lectures for Saïd Business School, Clayton Christensen explains his theory of disruption, drawing on examples of innovations occurring in the steel industry and from leading companies such as Toyota, Sony, Walmart and Indian refrigerator manufacturer, Godrej. Christensen explores how the theory can explain why the economies of America, England and Japan have stagnated. He also uses the theory to analyse how economies in Asia have achieved prosperity and to examine why countries such as Mexico are not experiencing economic growth.

These blogs begin with the basics; no previous knowledge of MMT-or even of economics-is required. The blogs are sequential; each subsequent blog builds on previous blogs. The blogs will be at the level of theory, with only limited reference to specific cases, histories, and policies.

If we want a high-growth society with broadly shared prosperity, and if we want to avoid dislocations like the one we have just gone through, we need to change our theory of action foundationally. We need to stop thinking about the economy as a perfect, self-correcting machine and start thinking of it as a garden.

Systems thinking. An individual or organization must first be able to put forward a new solution or set of solutions to a pressing social challenge. This sounds obvious, but we're suggesting that organizational theories of change, business plans, and other foundational materials need to reflect systems thinking. The most important tool in the new systems entrepreneur's suite is the ability to embed the solution into the larger system being targeted.

This is what Jane Jacobs taught us long ago in her book The Economy of Cities. This is what the Nobel Prize winning economist Robert Lucas meant when he formalized Jacob's argument into a theory of "human capital externalities" that stem from the dense clustering of people in cities as the basic mechanism of economic growth. Cities themselves power economic progress, driving artistic, technological, and overall economic growth at one and the same time.

Our Theory of Change The Network is about: Building community demand for results, by mobilizing residents and stakeholders around an equity agenda creating opportunity for families and transforming neighborhoods. The Network is about higher aspirations, and about providing both the expectation of a better future as well as the connections and collective power to pursue it. Creating new connections to systems and organizations by creating new avenues and approaches for interacting with systems that otherwise pose barriers. Transforming the environment to sustain the change, creating family-centered, equitable, results-focused systems that work for all families. Holding ourselves and others accountable for what we say we are doing in community.

Democracy made Athens a dynamic, creative force 2500 years ago. Even then, however, democracy was fragile, sometimes stupid, and short-lived. Plato held it in low esteem and Aristotle likened it to "mob rule." Why, then, do we want to create 21st Century Agoras. What we want to create are communities energized by vibrant participative democracy. In our Information Age as old hierarchies prove dysfunctional, it is imperative that human communities have flexible ways to tap their wisdom and power. We do not believe that unstructured discussion on the Athenian model is adequate for dealing with the complexities of the Information Age. It was not adequate even for the simpler (by an order of magnitude as determined by a metric called Situational Complexity Index) situations of that bygone age. The Information Age challenges us to make participative democracy a liberating force in the world today. Research and proven methodology, aided by networked computing, has resolved at least one basic dilemma of democracy:   How can we hear perspectives of all the stakeholders, make collective sense of them, and reach decisions and act on pressing issues? The approach that overcomes this dilemma and multiple other hindrances to dialogic democracy is called the Structured Dialogic Design (SDD). The Agoras Institute convenes these dialogues as Co-Laboratories of Democracy. This process is a fusion of the theory of Generic Design Science and the consultative practice of Interactive Management, both developed over the last 30 years by Dr. John Warfield and our founder, Aleco Christakis.

The purpose of sol is to discover, integrate and implement theories and practices for the interdependent development of people and their institutions.

The Presencing Institute is an awareness-based action-research community for profound individual and institutional renewal. Over the past two decades, we have developed Theory U as a social technology, led cross-sector change initiatives worldwide, and created a popular innovation platform (originally launched as a Massive Open Online Course) called u.lab.

A growing number of global leaders-driving both the theory and practice of innovation districts-have established The Global Institute on Innovation Districts.

"The Continuous Improvement effort is developing a prototype process for improving how state and federal agency systems that fund, regulate, or organize ecosystem recovery might improve services to local actors working on ecosystem recovery. It is inspired by Gemba Kaizen theory, initially developed within the Toyota Production System, where improvement opportunities are identified by the people who do the work on the "factory floor" and rapid improvement efforts are enabled through standard practices, and encouraged by leadership. We work with the resources we have, because self improvement in an intrinsic part of good government. The current iteration has received support from the Puget Sound Partnership's Ecosystem Coordination Board and is being guided by Lead Entities, Local Integrating Organizations and Ecosystem Recovery coordinators. "

"Economics in universities is narrow, uncritical and detached from the real world. It is dogmatically taught from one perspective as if it is the only legitimate way to study the economy. There is no room for the critical discussion and debate that is essential for any student to engage with real world economic problems. Seminars are focused on memorising and regurgitating academic theory, whilst exams test how well students can solve abstract equations.

Atlas of Care connects personal and professional scientific inquiry with community-based development theories and practices. We design experiences and practical tools that help people see, connect, and collectively inquire about their care (giving and receiving) activities in everyday life. Though care is central to our ability to thrive in our lives, it is often not seen or recognized. By learning how to see the invisible - visualizing care ecosystems and other aspects of living - people can be more intentional about how to build, strengthen, and expand the capacity of the various lived communities.

These algorithms use graph theory to calculate the importance of any given node in a network. They cut through noisy data, revealing parts of the network that need attention - but they all work differently. Each measure has its own definition of 'importance', so you need to understand how they work to find the best one for your graph visualization applications.

The Cultural Evolution Society is a professional scientific society that advances the theory and practice of cultural evolutionary studies. Our goal is to build capacity for researchers, educators, and practitioners to coordinate efforts.

Google version of the digital revolution. Far from being a bad thing, he argues that the potential for creativity, the ability to connect and communicate and the ability to have ones voice heard is driving fundamental societal change. So, is the digital revolution leading us to a more democratic, more environmentally and socially conscious future? And better business models?