Axelrod, RM, and MD Cohen. 2001. Harnessing complexity: Organizational implications of a scientific frontier. Basic Books.
Complex Adaptive Systems are systems where there are a large number of participants interacting in various ways. There may be a wide variety of participants. Old patterns may continue forward, or they may change quickly.
The goal is not to try to overcome complexity, but to harness complexity.
The authors claim to make important contributions to the field of complexity: "These include the critical role of nonrandom interactions in adaptation, the contrast of biological with informational copying, the relationships between credit allocation and measures of performance" (xii-xiii).
"In our analysis there are there key processes in a Complex Adaptive System. These key processes provide the basis of our three central chapters: Variation, Interaction, and Selection. We see variation, interaction, and selection as interlocking sets of concepts that can generate productive actions in a world that cannot be fully understood. We show how the very complexity that makes the world hard to understand provides opportunities and resources for improvement over time" (xv).
In the first chapter of this pop book, the vocabulary of the framework is explicated: agents, strategy (how agents respond to environment), population, system, selection, adaptation, co-evolution (4-8).
Complex Adaptive Systems make prediction difficult if not impossible.
"Agents, of a variety of types, use their strategies, in patterned interaction, with each other and with artifacts. Performance measures on the resulting events drive the selection of agents and/or strategies through processes of error-prone copying and recombination, thus changing the frequencies of the types within the system" (154).
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