ABSTRACT
In this book David and Alex Bennet propose a new model for organizations that enables them to react more quickly and fluidly to today's fast-changing, dynamic business environment: the Intelligent Complex Adaptive System (ICAS). ICAS is a new organic model of the firm based on recent research in complexity and neuroscience, and incorporating networking theory and knowledge management, and turns the living system metaphor into a reality for organizations. This book synthesizes new thinking about organizational structure from the fields listed above into ICAS, a new systems model for the successful organization of the future designed to help leaders and managers of knowledge organizations succeed in a non-linear, complex, fast-changing and turbulent environment. Technology enables connectivity, and the ICAS model takes advantage of that connectivity by fostering the development of dynamic, effective and trusting relationships in a new organizational structure.
This book outlines the model in chapter four, and then breaks down the model into its components in the next two chapters. This is a benefit to readers since different components of the model can be implemented at different times, so the book can guide implementation of one or all of the components as a manager sees fit. There are eight characteristics of the ICAS: organizational intelligence, unity and shared purpose, optimum complexity, selectivity, knowledge centricity, flow, permeable boundaries, and multi-dimensionality.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
part |22 pages
The Groundwork ⋆
chapter |10 pages
Moving Beyond The Bureaucratic Model
chapter |10 pages
The Present and Future Danger, or Why we Need to Change
part |49 pages
The Theory ⋆
chapter |12 pages
The Intelligent Complex Adaptive System
chapter |22 pages
Exploring the Emergent Properties of the ICAS
chapter |13 pages
Relationships Among Emergent Properties
part |138 pages
The ICAS in Practice ⋆
chapter |24 pages
The Learning Structure of the New Organization
chapter |13 pages
The Action Culture For Success
chapter |17 pages
The Four Major Organizational Processes
chapter |18 pages
The art of Collaborative Leadership
chapter |13 pages
Creating Emergence
chapter |19 pages
The Change Agent's Strategy
chapter |20 pages
Strategy, Balance, and the Correlation of Forces
chapter |8 pages
A Tale of two Firms
part |127 pages
The Knowledge Solution ⋆
chapter |14 pages
The New Knowledge Worker
chapter |21 pages
Knowledge Management
chapter |11 pages
The Learning Organization
chapter |13 pages
Learning, Knowledge Management, and Knowledge Workers
chapter |19 pages
Knowing
chapter |11 pages
Networking for the Bottom Line
part |22 pages
The Probable Future