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February 04, 2002 (Computerworld) -- While much of the Santa Fe, N.M., complexity community is building virtual worlds, Strategic Analytics Inc. focuses on dismantling the real world. It helps companies separate the complex mesh of events and interactions that affect customer behavior over time, enabling them to see how much behavior can be attributed to the company's actions and how much is due to environmental factors like the economy.
"We untangle that," explains Strategic Analytics President Joseph Breeden.
The company analyzes all of those interactions and separates them into what looks like a series of overlaid seismograph traces. For example, for a credit card client interested in understanding the reasons for customer attrition, one trace shows attrition as a series of shocks over time. Another shows changes in the economy over the same period. Another shows competitive pressures, and so on.
"You have seasonality, policy changes, the environment, economics, competition. And we get a complex blend of all this data and use technology to extract the pieces," says Breeden. "We break it up into major parts and show that this spike is because of something you did; this long trend is due to the economy."
Seeing that kind of cause-and-effect scenario enables a company to compare the past and the present in a meaningful way and make more useful decisions about the future.
For example, Strategic Analytics is beginning to help Seattle-based online retailer Amazon.com Inc. with customer relationship management. "Amazon wants to drive revenue and profitability, so they're thinking about how to get profitability over the lifetime of an account," says Breeden, who declined to offer more specifics about what Amazon hopes to get out of the engagement with his firm.
Complex Adaptive Systems Resources
Online
Complex Systems Web sites
From the Center for the Study of Complex Systems at the University of Michigan. This site has a good list of links to related research areas, publications, tools, mailing lists, other centers for research and more.
Complexity, Complex Systems & Chaos Theory Organizations as Self-Adaptive Complex Systems Page
From Brint.com. Find papers, publications, tools and other resources here. This is a long list of links.
Electronic Colloquium on Computational Complexity
Research reports, surveys and books in computational complexity from the computer science department at the University of Trier in Germany.
Consilience: Case studies in complex adaptive systems
Notes, discussion and projects from a Princeton University seminar.
Complex Systems Virtual Library
From Charles Sturt University in Australia.
Online CS Techreports
Search here for related papers on complex adaptive systems.
Complexity Online
This is a scientific information network about complex systems.
Complex Systems Bibliography
Bibliography of complex systems works by author, publication and topic.
Complex Adaptive Systems Research
Links to ongoing research and the organizations and people involved in that research.
Complex Systems Links
A compilation of links about complex systems research and modeling.
Brad Appleton's Science and Math Resources Links
This list by Brad Appleton, a software tools developer, contains links to Web sites on complexity, chaos and constraint theory.
Exploratorium's Complexity Web site
"This site attempts to place the idea of complexity in nature into a broader scientific context, and to provide newcomers to the field with an introduction to the concepts and theories that contribute to contemporary complexity research. These pages are an online resource intended to accompany the recent Turbulent Landscapes exhibit (13 artists' explorations of complexity in nature)."
Books
Turtles, Termites, and Traffic Jams (Complex Adaptive Systems)
By Mitchel Resnick (MIT Press, 1997; $17.95)
Hidden Order: How Adaptation Builds Complexity
By John H. Holland; Heather Mimnaugh, editor (Perseus Press, 1996; $11.20)
Adaptive Software Development: A Collaborative Approach to Managing Complex Systems
By James A. Highsmith III (Dorset House, 2000; $44.95)
Evolutionary Computation (Complex Adaptive Systems)
By Kenneth A. de Jong (MIT Press, March 2002; $35)
Learning and Soft Computing (Complex Adaptive Systems)
By Vojislav Kecman (MIT Press, 2001; $60)
Harnessing Complexity: Organizational Implications of a Scientific Frontier
By Robert Axelrod and Michael D. Cohe (Basic Books, 2001; $16)
Publications
Complexity
Complexity is a bimonthly, cross-disciplinary journal focusing on the rapidly expanding science of complex adaptive systems. Published by John Wiley & Sons Inc. An individual subscription is $85. Access a sample issue at www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/vsample?PISSN=1076-2787
MIT journals
Titles covering complex adaptive systems include Evolutionary Computation, Artificial Life and Journal of Machine Learning Research.
Complex Systems
A journal devoted to the science, mathematics and engineering of systems with simple components but overall complex behavior. Published quarterly; individual subscription is $93.50.
Complexity International
A refereed journal for scientific papers dealing with any area of complex systems research. Published by Charles Sturt University in Australia.
The Bulletin of Santa Fe Institute
The Santa Fe Institute is a private, nonprofit, multidisciplinary research and education center, devoted to pursuing emerging science.
Advances in Complex Systems
A quarterly journal that aims to provide a medium of communication for multidisciplinary approaches, either empirical or theoretical, to the study of complex systems. Published by World Scientific; individual subscription is $145. Access a sample issue at http://journals.wspc.com.sg/acs/04/sample/S02195259010401.html
Newsgroups
http://ibiblio.org/usenet-i/hier-s/comp.theory.html
Links to comp.theory-related newsgroups
What If . . . ?:
New Group to Address Business Complexity Applications
What If . . . ?
Deconstructing Reality
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