Jeroen Warner and Annelies Heijmans (Wageningen UR Disasters Studies Group) facilitated a round table on 'Complexity in disaster and conflict situations'. Jeroen: 'In disaster situations, interactions can be complex or complicated. Complex situations require adapting to the situation; controlling, rigid ways of responding do not work in complex situations.' Heather Baser (formerly with ECDPM) facilitated a round table on capacity development from the perspective of complex adapt...   read more >>

Irene Guijt (Learning by Design) summarizes the worskhop she facilitated on 'Strategic considerations for theories of change' and highlights the importance of revising the notion of theories of change to recognize complexity. Rick Davies (MandE news) shares his expectations for the innovation dialogue: take complexity beyond rhetoric into something practically useful for development programmes. Niels Boesen (Denmark) shares what he is expecting to get out of the inno...   read more >>

By Mark de Koning   read more >>

Lena Mueller works as a programme and knowledge management officer for Oxfam Novib and has just completed the Advanced Master in International Development at the CIDIN. Complexity theory is the hottest new thing in town. For the longest time, development organizations have triggered the public to donate money for good causes by posting simplistic stories on large billboards all over town: 'With one Euro a month, you can help Boubacar go to school and help him out of poverty'. Unfortunate...   read more >>

By Mark de Koning.   read more >>

A short overview of some of the conference cartoons by Mark de Koning.   read more >>

Pepijn Jansen is currently employed at the Wageningen UR Centre for Development Innovation (CDI). He is coordinating the Strategy and Complexity blog on The Broker. As the second – and last – day of this conference is coming to an end, people are discussing in small groups how to practically deal with complexity. What will they take home? What will they be doing with all the ideas that emerged, the recommendations given and the questions raised? That was today's main theme – getting p...   read more >>

Dave Snowden from Cognitive Edge reflects on his keynote presentation and workshop on the Cynefin at the Wageningen UR Centre for Development Innovation, who organiyed an innovation dialogue on navigating complexity from 30 November-1 December 2009.   read more >>

Seerp Wigboldus is working with Wageningen UR Centre for Development Innovation (CDI) and is coordinator of the Strategy and Complexity event. Being strategic may mean something different to acting strategically. The latter relates more to what we do and the first relates more to what we are capable of. In terms of ‘what we are capable of’, a view on ‘strategic competencies’ becomes an interesting perspective. Strategic competencies equip people and organizations to take position and...   read more >>

Jan van Ongevalle works at the Higher Institute of Labour and Society (HIVA) at the University of Leuven, Belgium. As I went through the first day, I was trying to relate the various ideas that were shared about being strategic in the face of complexity with the outcome mapping methodology. A good number of these ideas seem to be well accommodated by outcome mapping; others are still a bit out of tune. In tuneThe need to set flexible boundaries when dealing with complex systems, sin...   read more >>

Pepijn Jansen is currently employed at the Wageningen UR Centre for Development Innovation (CDI). He is coordinating the Strategy and Complexity blog on The Broker. In the train, on my way back home, I reflected on today’s keynote speeches. Somehow, I found them a bit contradictory while, at the same time, they matched perfectly. Perhaps it’s mostly the 'setting the boundaries' by David Snowden that caused my confusion, as Alejandro Litovsky was talking about breaking through the barrier...   read more >>

By Mark de Koning   read more >>

By Mark de Koning   read more >>

By Mark de Koning   read more >>

Pepijn Jansen is currently employed at the Wageningen UR Centre for Development Innovation (CDI). He is coordinating the Strategy and Complexity blog on The Broker. Reflecting on the first day of the conference, it might be easy to say that the main message is rather complex. But then, as both of the keynote speakers agreed, not everything is complex because we, as human beings, create order. So let me try and create a little bit of order in the story so far. David Snowden started by...   read more >>

Steve Waddell supports organizational, network, and societal change and development, through consultation, education, research and personal leadership. His workshop 'Visualizing complexity to realise change' is one of the workshop being held at the conference this afternoon. In my work, I find thinking of complexity in four dimensions is useful: temporal complexity...referring to the time lags (and variety of length) between taking action and seeing impact; dynamic...referring to t...   read more >>

Seerp Wigboldus is working with Wageningen UR Centre for Development Innovation (CDI) and is coordinator of the Strategy and Complexity event. Over the past few weeks, I have been browsing about 50 books and hundreds of articles on the wider subject area of ‘being strategic in the face of complexity’. Slowly, a pattern is starting to emerge in terms of how various authors seek to be strategic in addressing complex issues. Quite a few authors work with more than one of the following ap...   read more >>

Pepijn Jansen is currently employed at the Wageningen UR Centre for Development Innovation (CDI). He is coordinating the Strategy and Complexity blog on The Broker. Looking forward to this conference about complexity, it might be useful to get back to the basic and simple questions. We are talking about complexity, everything is complex, and we need to be strategic to deal with complex issues, and so on. What, then, is complexity? Where does this notion of complexity come from? That was...   read more >>

Seerp Wigboldus is working with Wageningen UR Centre for Development Innovation (CDI) and is coordinator of the Strategy and Complexity event. What does ‘strategic’ mean to whom? This is an essential question to ask when discussing what ‘being strategic in the face of complexity’ involves. Is ‘strategic’ synonymous to ‘good’ and ‘ethical’? ‘Strategic’ may sometimes be considered as merely being opportunistic, such as in the case of being politically correct. Being strategic refers to...   read more >>

Jim Woodhill is director of the Wageningen UR Centre for Development Innovation (CDI) in the Netherlands. CDI is organizing the 'Strategy and Complexity' event. Welcome to the first blog in the lead up to our Innovation Dialogue on ‘Being Strategic in the Face of Complexity’. Much interest has been shown and we have expanded capacity to cope with the high number of registrations – now well over 100. I recently spent a thought-provoking afternoon at ‘Accelerating Sustainable Trade’, a...   read more >>