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Complex Adaptive Systems and Strategy as Learning

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Global Innovation and Entrepreneurship

Abstract

The prescriptive schools of strategy could be argued to have been served the early adopters of the first and second industrial revolutions and the Asian developmental states during their catch up phase when they matched Western models of development. However, growing global complexity is posing new challenges. As the current complex interactive global economy sees leadership in particular sectors and technologies pass between Western and Eastern participants over time and global shocks become more difficult to anticipate and manage, the limitations of prescriptive strategies have been brought into focus. This demonstrates the necessity for an approach to strategy informed by complexity science. Modern global trading environments are not merely complicated but they are also complex, and it has become important to appreciate that these properties are not synonymous.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Rumelt (1984), Grant (1991), Barney (1991).

  2. 2.

    For example, Cohen and Levinthal (1990), Brown and Duguid (1991), Senge (1992), Badaracco (1991), Kogut and Zander (1996), Powell (1998).

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. The Open University, Milton Keynes, UK

    Ysanne M. Carlisle & Elizabeth McMillan

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  1. Ysanne M. Carlisle
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  2. Elizabeth McMillan
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Asia Pacific Technology Network, Manchester, United Kingdom

    Stephen E. Little

  2. Erasmus University, Rotterdam, Zuid-Holland, The Netherlands

    Frank M. Go

  3. The Open University, Hong Kong, Kowloon, Hong Kong

    Teresa Shuk-Ching Poon

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Carlisle, Y.M., McMillan, E. (2017). Complex Adaptive Systems and Strategy as Learning. In: Little, S., Go, F., Poon, TC. (eds) Global Innovation and Entrepreneurship. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-43859-7_3

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