Complex engineered, organizational and natural systems

Abstract

This paper describes an effort to determine the rationale and content for a research agenda in complex systems. This effort included a workshop conducted with 50 thought leaders in complex engineered, organizational, and natural systems. The results of this workshop were subsequently presented to seven groups in academia and industry across the United States. In this way, additional comments, suggestions, and insights were gained from roughly 200 participants in these presentations. The objectives of these eight events were to understand the underlying issues that cause us to perceive a system to be complex, and formulate a set of fundamental research questions whose pursuit would advance abilities to address these issues. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Syst Eng: 260–271, 2007