Design Synergies
Channel: Systems Innovation
Date: 20/12/2014

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This section discusses synergies, constructive and destructive relations within complex engineered systems.
According to our friend Wikipedia; A synergy is the interaction or cooperation of two or more organisations, substances, or other agents to produce a combined effect greater than the sum of their separate effects. It is the creation of a whole that is greater than the simple sum of its parts.
￼Complex engineered systems are composed of many diverse components, and when we say diverse we may be talking about components that were never deigned to interoperate, think of the internet, it is called the network of networks, many of those original local area networks that were built for hospitals, businesses or factories were designed with their own internal logic. When they were built no one though about how one day we might be connecting them all together, thus today we have the hug challenge of opening all these information system up and exposing their data and functionality through common interfaces.
Designing these heterogeneous composite systems is a bit like being a D.J. taking a song by the Beatles and mixing it with Nirvana and Fatboy slim, we have to somehow make them work together seamlessly for the end user, somehow overcome all this diversity, difference and general messiness and we do this by designing the relations between the component.
Relations can be fundamentally of two different types, synergistic that is constructive or destructive what we might call relations of interference, so lets take an example of both.
Destructive relations represent the interference of two or more components within the system an example of this might be a cross road intersection, for traffic on each road the other road is essentially an interference, slowing it down and stopping it on its way.
This is what we call a zero-sum game, when the traffic on one road gets what it wants then the traffic on the other looses and vis versa. There are many examples of zero sum games in the systems we engineer, from noise pollution to over populated cities, we are always trying to avoid the development of these zero sum games and the relations of interference that lead to them.
In contrary, constructive relations are synergistic, that is when two or more components interact and the net result is beneficiary to both parties, resulting in what we might call a positive sum game, each gets out of the interaction more than they put in. Examples of this are social networks the more that join the more valuable the network is for any individual user, many forms of economic trade are also positive sum. What we are trying to do then in designing these networks is to make positive sum games the attractor state, that is the state towards which elements within the systems will naturally gravitate. Of cause this easier said than done.
It requires a significant investment in the systems infrastructure, that is the relations through which the elements interact, to illustrate this lets think back to our example of the road crossing, how could we avoid a zero sum game here, well engineers have already figured this one out by creating a flyover with ramps connecting the two roads, we now have a positive sum game but it took intelligent design and significant investment of resources, this was not the default position.
Alternative technologies might be another example, where as many of our traditional technologies create a zero sum game between human needs and ecological needs, well designed alternative technologies try to change this by harnessing synergistic relations.
Another factor these examples might illustrate is the importance of nonlinear or parallel systems in creating synergistic relations. In simple linear systems everything requires the same input and produces the same output, the result is a linear process of inputing resources from the environment and outputting waste back to the environment, of cause we are all familiar with this model as it represent the fundamentals of industrial economies.
In order to create synergies there needs to be some diversity in the system, that is processes taking place on different, parallel levels. In this way different components in the system process different resources and it may be possible to connect what is waste for one component to what is


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