List wouldn't be complete without W. Mitchell Waldrop's Complexity - The Emerging Science at the Edge of Order and Chaos ISBN 0-671-76789-5

Thanks for a great question!
Here's an article from a talk given by Tim Brown of IDEO. His talk, along with the subsequent Q&A from the audience addresses the question of complexity in the context of design and innovation.

~michael

"Solving Tough Problems" by Adam Kahane (short enough for an executive to read)

I'd recommend Stuart Kauffman's books, like 'Origin of Order', 'At home in the Universe'. Cilliers, 'Complexity and postmodernism'. Eric Bonabeau's work. Katherine Hayles, 'How we became posthuman'. Kevin Kelly, 'Out of control'. H. Maturana & F. Varela, 'Autopoiesis and Cognition' and 'The Tree of Knowledge'. And your work, of course! ;-)

1. Johnson, S., 2001. Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software, New York: Scribner.

2. Waldrop, M.M., 1992. Complexity: The Emerging Science at the Edge of Order and Chaos, New York: Simon & Schuster.

3. Sardar, Z., 1999. Introducing Chaos, Duxford, Cambridge, UK: Icon Books. [Only a short section on complexity; but for me the book illustra

4. Gleick, J., 1987. Chaos: Making a New Science, New York, N.Y., U.S.A: Viking.

5. Axelrod, R.M., 1999. Harnessing Complexity: Organizational Implications of a Scientific Frontier, New York: Free Press.

6. Briggs, J., 1999. Seven Life Lessons of Chaos: Timeless Wisdom from the Science of Change 1st ed., New York: HarperCollinsPublishers.

7. Lakomski; Managing Without Leadership

8. Anklam; Net Work

9. Andrus, D. Calvin, "The Wiki and the Blog: Toward a Complex Adaptive Intelligence Community" . Studies in Intelligence, Vol 49, No 3, September 2005 Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=755904

10. Kurtz, C., & Snowden, D. (2003). The new dynamics of strategy: Sense-making in a complex and complicated world. IBM Systems Journal, 42

11. Meyer, A. D., Gaba, V., & Colwell, K. A. (2005). Organizing Far from Equilibrium: Nonlinear Change in Organizational Fields. ORGANIZATION SCIENCE, 16, 456-473. doi: 10.1287/orsc.1050.0135

12. Philip Anderson. "Complexity Theory and Organization Science"
Organization Science, Vol. 10, No. 3, Special Issue: Application of Complexity Theory to
Organization Science. (May - Jun., 1999), pp. 216-232.

Dave

While I have been reading this blog, complexity articles and listening to your podcasts, I have been struck by parallels between complex systems and how liberal political thinkers (Burke, Tocqueville chief among others) argue healthy political societies should work. I don't know how valid you think such parallels are, but I felt challenged to recommend such a political work for your list.

I think Edmund Burke's speech on conciliation with America
is an excellent example of diagnosis of a problem in a system acknowledged to be complex, caused by a kind of simple-systems thinking.

For example, he denies that peace can be restored by "the precise marking the shadowy boundaries of a complex Government"; asserts that "Refined policy [his term for manipulation] ever has been the parent of confusion"; that America must be governed according to its own nature and cicumstances, "not according to our own imaginations; not according to abstract ideas of right"; and he attacks one of North's measures as "supported by no experience; justified by no analogy".

I hope you will forgive, if you consider my suggestion, any errors of Burke's in his Whig History of the fate of Wales under English dominion. I cannot vouch for his facts, but it was (and is) good rhetoric.

Burke's Reflections on the French Revolution
is also good and much more famous. His ability to think complexly enabled him to predict, among other things, that France must eventually be stabilised by an alpha male - nine years after Burke wrote that, Napoleon took power. But the Reflections are a more forbidding read, still rather controversial in some quarters and the Conciliation speech has the added advantage of being about America's natal drama.

A US Government project - bit vague perhaps.
http://www.demos.co.uk/publications/systemfailure2
Demos have done some dreadful work but the first edition of system failure was very good so I am trusting to the second edition.
There seems to be very little on dynamic complexity. The Logic of Failure by Dietrich Dorner (o umlaut) has people playing simulations of aid delivery with dire consequences. Subtitle is 'recognizing and avoiding error in complex situations'.
Any chance of a hint as to application/type of people?

My reading list on the topic is not comprehensive but the best thing I have read on complexity to date has been Eric Beinhocker's "The Origin of Wealth". I don't agree with all of the frameworks he proposes for understanding complexity economics but he explains core concepts of complexity and evolution in an economics context in a way that I could easily relate to.

Recently hired a social scientist with a complexity background and was a bit shocked (you'd think I would learn by now) that my reading list and hers were almost 100% different. So I would ask whether it is complexity from a social science point of view or a more mathematical point of view. Most of my titles are more academic, less for the lay person. But here it is -

Herbert Simon, "Sciences of the Artificial" is considered a classic, although I think Simon was a lot better in his other works.

Sawyer, R. Keith "Social Emergence" is a big favorite of mine.

Newman, Barabasi, and Watts (ed.) "The Structure and Dynamics of Networks" Duncan Watts is first rate.

Batty's book "Cities and Complexity" also addresses generative issues.

Holland's "Hidden Order" is another classic.

There are many more, but this is sort of the ones that either I have read recently, or have a certain gravitas in the community play in.

Dave

I'm going mainstream and popularist here but just wading through The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb and at least he's engaging for the ordinary punter, such as me.

Mark

David,

For a quick, free, highly accessible, introduction see http://www.calresco.org - which illustrates complexity using several disciplines.

Regards, Stan Halse

Albert-László Barabási — Linked. The New Science of Networks.
ISBN 0-738-20667-9

Janeer Bar-Yam — Dynamics of Complex Systems.
ISBN 0-201-55748-7

John H. Holland — Emergence. From Chaos to Order.
ISBN 0-738-20142-1

John H. Holland — Hidden Order. How Adaptation Builds Complexity.
ISBN 0-201-44230-2

Stuart Kauffman — At Home in the Universe. The Search for Laws of Self-Organization and Complexity.
ISBN 0-195-11130-3

Kevin Kelly — Out of Control. The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems, and the Economic World.
ISBN 0-201-48340-8

Roger Lewin — Complexity. Life at the Edge of Chaos.
ISBN 0-226-47654-5

M. Mitchell Waldrop — Complexity. The Emerging Science at the Edge of Order and Chaos.
ISBN 0-671-87234-6

Dave

Best paper I have seen covering all the bases is: Ben Ramalingam and Harry Jones
with Toussaint Reba and John Young - Exploring the science of complexity
Ideas and implications for development and humanitarian efforts

see http://www.odi.org.uk/publications/working_papers/WP285.pdf

Cheers, Ron

The Quark and the Jaguar, by Murray Gell-Man

Consilience, by E. O. Wilson

Two more, though it's been a long time since I read them. I remember them as arresting and thought provoking.

The End of Certainty, Ilya Prigogine

The Essence of Chaos, Edward Lorenz

On complexity and organizations, the work of Ackoff, Forrester and Weick are typically consistently good (but I think you know more about their work than do I).

Stafford Beer on cybernetics is an oldie but goody, but maybe not too directly focused on "complexity" per se ? .. maybe his stuff on syntegration, team syntegrity, "managing" complexity (it must be remembered that his work is at least 30 or 40 years ago now).

Hi Dave

I'd like to add some more books:

best book on complexity and social networks I've read is
-D Watts: six degrees, the science of a connected age

best book on coevolution is actually a book on biology and phisiology
- Turner: the extended organism

for somebody interested in the critique of modern science (linear) and on an alternative scheme (non linear), that is, fractal thinking. Complexity and fractal thinking probably are the same thing, Bruce West's books are great:
- B West & B Deering: The lure of modern science: fractal thinking (quantitative)
- B West: how medicine went wrong (qualitative)

still on fractals, the book by Mandelbrot debunks modern theory and offers an easy introduction to fractal thinking in financial theory
Mandelbrot and Hudson "the (mis)behavior of markets

I see that the father of complexity is missing in the list.
Nicolis & Prigogine: introduction to complexity

I would add the following not already in the list

(1) Tsoukas Haridimos "Complex Knowledge: Studies in Organizational Epistemology", Oxford University Press

(2) Sergio Chrisoforo et al., "Nonlinearity, Chaos & Complexity" Oxford University Press

(3) Nicolis Gregoire, Prigogine Ilya, "Exploring Complexity", Freeman

(4) Serra a, Zanarini G, "Complex Systems and Cognitive Processse", Springer-Verglag

(5) Gregersen Niels Henrik (ed), "From Complexity to Life: On The Emergence of Life and Meaning"

(6) Godfrey-Smith Peter, "Complexity and the Function of Mind in Nature", Cambridge University Press

(7) Mitchell Sandra D., "Biological Complexity and Integrative Pluralism", Cambridge University Press

Three related and idiosyncratic books from OUP with a Christian (non-fundamentalist) perspective are:

(8) Clayton Philip "Mind and Emergence: From Quantum to Consciousness", Oxford University Press

(9) Clayton Philip, Davies Paul (Eds) "The Re-Emergence of Emergence: The Emergentist Hypothesis from Science to Religion", Oxford University Press
and (I haven't read this one - it's reasonably newly published and very expensive (haven't found a cheap second hand copy yet!)

(10) Murphy Nancy, Stoeger William R, "Evolution and Emergence", Oxford University Press.

Cynthia Kurtz had recommended me three excellent books (although you will know them well) that are worth considering if the audience are more biological

(11) Briggs John, Peat F. David, "Turbulent Mirror", Harper and Row

(12) Camazine Scott et al., "Self-Organization in Biological Systems", Princeton

and

(13) Ball Philip ",The Self-Made Tapestry", Oxford University Press

Although I also like

(14) Ball Philip, "Critical Mass: How One Thing Leads to Another", William Heinemann

A book related but not explicitly about complexity but it comes into its description of narrative and worth considering is

(15) Polkinghorne "Narrative Knowing and the Human Sciences", SUNNY

Not sure about the value of long lists - will those people have the time to read and digest it?
Here's what I would do: when in Rome .....
1. ask those people from said government project what literature they know and consider relevant about the topic. Pick the most frequently mentioned one, possibly as a pre-read for all of them in order to have a common ground - even if flawed.
2. Complement it by another one that you choose which should be "orthogonal" to their favorite, also as mandatory pre-read.
3. all else would be optional.

It's not a book, but the US public broadcasting system produced a video unit on emergence (at http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sciencenow/3410/03.html). I have found it a useful way to start some conversations about the meaning of complexity.

Although I've found several interesting pieces through the comments above, I agree with christianhauck re "Not sure about the value of long lists". I'm sure you know as well as anybody that just "complexity" is a pretty broad brush.

Thus I will limit myself to the single article (generally a superior form to books), which has most influenced myself and a group of friends on the path of seeing management and strategy from a "complexity" perspective. I have to thank you for the occasion to re-read it (to see if I still thought it suitable for your list); the explanations of complex adaptive systems and generative relationships are still as strong as anything I've seen since.

Complexity and Organization Management
Robert R. Maxfield
http://www.ndu.edu/inss/books/books%20-%201998/Complexity,%20Global%20Politics%20and%20Nat'l%20Sec%20-%20Sept%2098/ch08.html

Late to the party, but I'd recommend anything by Edward R. Tufte. I'm working my way through "The Visual Display of Quantitative Information", and I'm finding it fascinating.

@Dave -So did this ever emerge as a list? And what would your top five be?