Mary Ann Allison and Susanne Kelly, The Complexity Advantage: How the
Science of Complexity Can Help Your Business Achieve Peak Performance,
McGraw-Hill Companies, 1999, 240 pp., $24.95 (hardcover). ISBN:
0-070-01400-0
From the publisher: "In The Complexity Advantage, consultants
Susanne Kelly and Mary Ann Allison give us the first truly practical guide
for using the principles of complexity theory to transform any business,
large or small, into one that can consistently redefine itself to keep pace
with today's ever-changing marketplace. Based largely on the insights they
gained from Citibank's successful, pioneering implementation of
complexity-based programs in the workplace, the authors provide a
fascinating first-hand look at how complexity theory was applied in the
company's technology community to meet a broad range of ongoing business
challenges. The Complexity Advantage can show any business leader how
to boost productivity, acquire better ways of leading, and be better able to
understand and influence vital relationships with employees, customers, and
vendors."
Gary H. Anthes, "Agents of Change: Software Agents Tame Supply Chain
Complexity and Optimize Performance"(html,Use Quicklink 35605 Search)ComputerWorld, January 27, 2003.
Abstract: This news item relates how Proctor and
Gamble's use of agent-based modeling helped them fundamentally (and
profitably) transform their supply chain system connecting over 5 billion
consumers in 140 countries into a "supply network."
Peter Bentley (ed.), Evolutionary Design by Computers, Morgan
Kaufmann Publishers, 464 pages, May 1999, ISBN: 1-558-60605-X.
From the publisher: "Some of the most startling achievements in the
use of computers to automate design are being accomplished by the use of
evolutionary search algorithms to evolve designs. (This book) provides a
showcase of the best and most original work of the leading international
experts in Evolutionary Computation, Engineering Design, Computer Art, and
Artificial Life."
Alister Craig and Jörg D. Hoheisel (eds.), Automation: Genomic
and Functional Analysis, Volume 28, Methods in Microbiology, Academic
Press, January 1999, 270 pp., ISBN 0-12-194860-9.
From the publisher: "Automation is an enormously exciting area,
where techniques and assays that were once repetitive, tedious, and time
consuming can be performed robotically, liberating the time of researchers
and hospital laboratory workers for more interesting work. Many techniques
have now been automated and often miniaturized, including PCR analysis,
DNA/RNA preparation, diagnostic tests, compound screening, and of course,
sequencing... Automation, edited by two of the leading experts in the
field, presents the very latest experimental techniques in detail."
R. Dai (ed.), Virtual Reality for Industrial Applications,
Springer-Verlag, Berlin/Heidelberg, 1998, ISGN 3-540-63348-0.
From the book
blurb: "This book gives a systematic overview of the fundamental aspects of
VR technology and its industrial applications, based on up-to-date
information provided by experts from research and industry.
Neil Fligstein, The Architecture of Markets: An Economic Sociology of
Twenty-First Century Capitalist Societies, Princeton University Press,
274 pp., November 2002, ISBN: 0-691-10254-6
From the publisher: "(This book) represents a major and timely step
beyond recent, largely empirical studies that oppose the neoclassical model of
perfect competition but provide sparse theory toward a coherent economic
sociology. Fligstein offers this theory. With it he interprets not just
globalization and the information economy, but developments more specific to
American capitalism in the past two decades -- among them, the 1980s merger
movement. He makes new inroads into the `theory of fields,' which links the
formation of markets and firms to the problems of stability. His
political-cultural approach explains why governments remain crucial to
markets and why so many national variations of capitalism endure."
Neil Fligstein is Professor of Sociology and Class of 1939
Chancellor's Professor at the University of California, Berkeley.
Alex Lightman and William Rojas, Brave New Unwired World: The Digital
Big Bang and the Infinite Internet, John Wiley and Sons, 320pp., March
2002, ISBN: 0-471-44110-4.
From the publisher: "In (this book), the CEO of one of today's hottest
wireless businesses explores the latest thinking and trends in the exciting
world of digital wireless communication and boldly predicts the future of this
hot new field. He acquaints readers with the amazing technologies involved
and the no less amazing profit opportunities opening up around them. Drawing
upon his unique access to top management at Nokia, Ericsson, Motorola,
Verizon, IBM, Cisco, Psion, Microsoft, and other key players, he profiles
those who are vying to be among the first to cash in on the wireless
revolution while holding their own against brilliant upstarts, government
regulation, and the threat of extinction by competitors who appear from
virtually nowhere, at any moment."
Alex Lightman is a Distinguished Research Fellow of Laguna Research
Partners and co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Charmed Technology,
Inc. William Rojas is a Senior Contributing Analyst for Pyramid Research,
specializing in the Japanese market as well as emerging broadband fixed and
wireless technologies.
Thomas W. Malone, Robert Laubaucher, and Michael S. Scott Morton (eds.),
Inventing the Organizations of the 21st Century, MIT Press, 456 pp.,
2003. ISBN: 0-262-63273-X
From the publisher: "Technological changes have displaced the
hierarchical corporation as the model for business organization; the large
corporations of the new century are decentralizing and externalizing,
creating networks of "industry ecosystems" that will replace the top-down
organizations of the last century. (This book) reports on a five-year
multidisciplinary research initiative conducted by MIT's Sloan School of
Management and sponsored by leading international corporations. The goal of
the initiative was not only to understand the way we work now but to invent
new ways of working and put them into practice."
John McMillan, Reinventing the Bazaar: The Natural History of
Markets, W. W. Norton, 256 pp., 2002. ISBN: 0-393-05021-1.
From the publisher: "From the wild swings of the stock market to the
online auctions of eBay to the unexpected twists of the world's
post-Communist economies, markets have suddenly become quite visible. It is
now questioned what makes these institutions work, how important they are and
how we can improve them. This text takes the reader on a tour of a world we
once took for granted, offering examples ranging from a camel trading fair in
India to the 20 million dollar per day Aalsmeer flower market in the
Netherlands to the global trade in AIDS drugs. Eschewing ideology, this text
aims to show that markets are neither magical nor immoral. Rather, they are
powerful if imperfect tools, the best we've found for improving our living
standards."
John McMillan is Professor of International Management and Economics
at Stanford University Graduate School of Business.
Alex Roland and Philip Shiman, Strategic Computing, The
MIT Press, 440pp., June 2002, ISBN: 0-262-18226-2.
From the publisher: "This is the story of an extraordinary
effort by the U. S. Department of Defense to hasten the advent of
`machines that think.' From 1983 to 1993, the Defense Advanced
Research Projects Agency (DARPA) spent an extra $1 billion on
computer research aimed at achieving artificial intelligence. The
Strategic Computing Initiative (SCI) was conceived as in integrated
plan to promote computer chip design and manufacture, computer
architecture, and artificial intelligence software. What
distinguished SCI from other large-scale technology programs was
that it self-consciously set out to advance an entire research
front... In (this book), Alex Roland and Philip Shiman uncover the
roles played in the SCI by technology, individuals, and social and
political forces. They explore DARPA culture, especially the
information processing culture within the agency, and they evaluate
the SCI's accomplishments and set them in the context of overall
computer development during this period."
Alex Roland is Professor of History at Duke University. Philip
Shiman is a member of the Defense Acquisition History Project, a
government-sponsored team researching defense acquisition fro 1945 to the
present.
Howard J. Sherman and Ron Schultz, Open Boundaries: Creating Business
Innovation Through Complexity, Perseus Books, 1998, 256 pp., $26.00
(hardcover). ISBN: 0-738-20005-0
From the publisher: "Open Boundaries introduces a practical
vocabulary to help managers understand, analyze, and nurture the creative
process by eshewing linear `cause and effect' approaches to decision making
in favor of an approach that thrives on ambiguity and unpredictability.
Showcasing the pioneering efforts of such organizations as Xerox-PARC,
Applied Biosystems, Patagonia, and the United States Marine Corps, the
authors vividly illustrate the power of complexity thinking in action -- from
creating new markets to establishing new ways of spreading emerging knowledge
throughout the company."
Robert Shiller, The New Financial Order: Risk in the 21st Century,
Princeton University Press, 400 pp., April 2003, ISBN: 0-691-09172-2.
From the publisher: "This compelling and important new book presents a
fresh vision for hedging risk and securing our economic future. Shiller
describes six fundamental ideas for using modern information technology and
advanced financial theory to temper basic risks that have been ignored by
risk management institutions -- risks to the value of our jobs and homes, to
the vitality of our communities, and to the very stability of national
economies. Informed by a comprehensive risk information database, this new
financial order would include global markets for trading risks and exploiting
myriad new financial opportunities, from inequality insurance to
intergenerational social security."
Robert Schiller is the Stanley B. Resor Professor of Economics at Yale
University, New Haven, and the author of Irrational Exuberance, also
from Princeton University Press.
Paul Twomey and Richard Cadman, "Agent-Based Modelling of Customer
Behavior in the Telecoms and Media Markets"(pdf,141K),
Info, Vol. 4(1), 2002, pp. 56-63.
Abstract: The author introduces the reader to some of
the basic concepts and methods behind agent-based modeling and presents
illustrative business applications of these tools, including work in the
telecoms and media markets.
tesfatsi@iastate.edu
9. Commercial Development and Application