Tag Archives: training

Harnessing the power of complexity in development

This post first appeared on the BEAM Exchange blog.

Market systems are complex adaptive systems and market systems development is a complex task.

This abstract statement reflects the reality market systems practitioners encounter every day: market systems are dynamic with rich interactions between a large number of diverse actors. Changes in these systems are difficult to predict and development interventions often, if not always, lead to unintended consequences. Continue reading

Want to learn about complexity? Join me for a unique expedition through complexity in development

I’m really excited to announce a new training course that I have put together with Tony Quinlan from Narrate, which will be starting in September. As readers of my blog know, I have applied concepts and principles of complexity to my work in international development for a long time. In this course, I will share these concepts, principles and experiences I have made and accompany the participants to make sense of their own experiences and create new experiences in applying complexity concepts.

Here the brief blurb for the course:

Harnessing the power of complexity in development – An extended, unique expedition through complexity approaches to enhance agile, adaptive and appropriate work in dynamic and uncertain development contexts.

This course gives you a unique opportunity to gain experience and expertise in complexity, through a guided journey covering the fundamentals of complexity. Projects taken from participants’ real-world situations (not hypothetical case studies) will be used to apply these principles, teams being mentored all the while by two expert practitioners.

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Join me for the 10th Mesopartner Summer Academy on Systemic Change

Mesopartner Summer AcademyAlso this year I will be training at the Mesopartner Summer Academy, which takes place in Berlin from July 7 to 11.

The focus of this year’s academy will again be on systemic change in economic development. We will unwrap systemic change in economic development. Complexity thinking has in the last couple of years become more and more the basis of our work. So this will guide also the inputs during the academy. We will introduce the Systemic Insight Approach (see http://systemic-insight.com) and some general considerations about change in systems. Then we will run two streams, one with a focus on territorial (sub-national) development, the other with a focus on industrial development (this e.g. includes things like Value Chain approach). On Thursday, there will be shorter sessions with a number of electives like supporting green development, bottom up policy development, competitiveness and innovation, complexity in economic development more in depth, etc.

I would be happy to see some of my readers at the Academy. There is an early bird discount for registrations up to 24 March!

More information on the 10th Mesopartner Summer Academy 2014.