Dave Snowden, Cognitive Edge, started with, “System design is not a linear process” and today requires a co-evolutionary approach.

Key concepts:  everything is fragmented, pattern based decisions (associated with the concept of mess), complexity & constraint, distributed cognition (from fail safe to safe fail experimentaiton), natural numbers (5, 15, 150) (some of which Dave covered in last year’s keynote, it’s podcast is available.)

Existing methods: narrative based requirements, cross silo self-forming teams, managing emergence

Emergent methods: crews, coherence mapping

Project design — Cynefin, see Harvard Business Review article Nov 07 (which won an Academy of Management’s Award for the best article by practitioners — and article which Dave wrote with Mary Boone)

Dave recorded his talk today and will post a podcast on his site.