Don't+try+to+tame+wicked+problems

= Don’t try to tame wicked problems  =

By Alistair Brett

// Wicked: Adjective (slang) meaning very good, excellent; “cool”; “awesome” from 13th Century Middle English wikked, wikke, an alteration of wicke, adjectival use of Old English wicca (“wizard, sorcerer”). “Going beyond reasonable or predictable limits.” Or, the Merriam-Webster dictionary’s (nicely understated) “very bad or unpleasant.” //

“A problem with many layers of nested and intractable predicaments,… complex inter-linkages between elements… small perturbations can quickly transform into catastrophic events…” This was how Nepalese citizens viewed the impact of climate change on their country in a 2009 survey of local views.

Innovation ecosystems, as well as climate, have their share of nested and intractable predicaments where inter-linkages are hidden like the layers of an onion. New business creation is linked with leadership; leadership linked with culture; resources are linked with frameworks and policies.

In economic development, especially in developing countries, poverty is linked with education, nutrition with poverty, the economy with nutrition, and so on as described the 2014 book **Aid at the Edge of Chaos**, by Ben Ramalingam. Partly as a result of Ramalingam’s book the global aid community is starting to understand that countries and regions are complex systems, and in turn are made up of sub-complexes, rather than linear modules. In linear systems cause and effect are determinable and typically modeled using Logical Framework Analysis, or ‘logframe’ methods (ubiquitous in the global aid community). The behaviors of complex systems don’t fit into logframes which deal with inputs and outputs and the tasks which produce the latter from the former. A Balanced Scorecard strategy map outlining an organization’s plans to accomplish defined objectives is another example of heavy reliance on cause-and-effect logic as best-practice.

More on Wicked Problems and commercialization in a future blog.