SHARING BACKGROUND RESEARCH

DESIGN FOR COMPLEXITY / Book Chapter in Progress

RESHARING BACKGROUND RESEARCH

Making Sense of PARNES "MESS" / ACKOFF "MESS"

Published earlier this week in NextD Journal:

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Happy to share this brief background research clarification post in reference to a particular anomaly noticed in the historical innovation methods literature that relates directly to the subject of Design for Complexity and is often being repeated endlessly in social media, now with the help of ChatGPT.

One of the not-so-fun things about writing a book on this complex cross-community subject is that one inevitably is called upon to move beyond various inter-tribal cheerleading literatures in order to more clearly see, make sense of, and communicate the cross-community evolution picture. 

In that journey one inevitably encounters in historical literature and current interpretations of that literature, various forms of competitive angling between the anchor disciplines related to Design for Complexity, described in an earlier chapter of this book as Action Research, Creative Problem Solving (CPS), Design and Soft Systems Thinking.

BOTH SCHOLARS / VERY DIFFERENT VIBES

Sid Parnes: “Mess” arrival: 1959-1964 (CPS / Applied Creativity Community)

Russ Ackoff “Mess” arrival: 1974-1978 (Hard Systems Thinking Community)

SUMMARY / THREE CENTRAL PERPLEXITIES 

Perplexity 1: The notion of “mess” in the context of organizational and societal problematic contexts did not originate with Russ Ackoff or systems thinking.

Perplexity 2: The notion that the organizational and societal changemaking party did not exist until 1982-83 with the arrival of Soft Systems Methodology is a false narrative. 

Perplexity 3: None of the other anchor approaches identified in this book, Action Research, Creative Problem Solving and Design faced a mid-life crisis due to not being human-centered.  

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