“Participatory Innovation”: An effective model for

high-complexity innovation management

Alfredo del Valle, Ph.D.

Universidad Alberto Hurtado, Erasmo Escala 1835, Santiago, Chile
E-mail: adelvalle@innovativo.cl

Abstract: This paper makes the “Participatory Innovation Model” known to

the innovation management community. The PI Model deals effectively with
‘high-complexity’ innovation problems, i.e. those involving large numbers of
actors (stakeholders), issues, disciplines and cultures. Such problems occur
everywhere in business and public policy; examples are building innovation
cultures or dealing with energy issues. Current approaches to managing them
—simplification, analysis/modelling and trial-and-error— lack the required
complexity-handling capacities and are thus ineffective. The PI Model does
have such capacities and has led to excellent practical results in both business
and public-policy settings; five case studies are presented here. It has strong
theoretical grounds and its own set of concepts, operational principles, methods
and tools; its tools are based on natural language rather than mathematics. A
large number of experiences have been carried out with this Model, in different
fields and countries, over the years. The Model is available for collaboration
initiatives.

Keywords: Complexity; high-complexity; participation; culture; innovation

management; multi-actor; multi-disciplinary work; innovation; business; public
policies.

1 The general question of high-complexity innovation management

This paper deals with a new approach to the management of a general class of real-world
problems we call “high-complexity problems”. We give this name to change processes
involving large numbers of inter-dependent actors, interests, issues, cultures and action
possibilities. One example is the effective building of innovation capacities in business
companies that lack them. Another is the design and implementation of public policies in
areas such as education or crime prevention. We distinguish them from “complex
problems”, which fall within the complexity-handling capacities of specific disciplines or
other bodies of knowledge (e.g. marketing, social psychology, law, macro-economics,
knowledge management) and thus have available well-established schools of thought,
practices, tools and professional networks. “High-complexity problems” are always
unique and exceed the capacities of any single discipline and its tools; in fact, the
contribution of several disciplines is always expected in practical attempts to deal with
them.
Problems of this class share six important characteristics, which will be illustrated for
the case of innovation capacity building in business firms (Del Valle et. al., 2010, p. 68):

1
• The need to deal effectively with an unending list of relevant issues and themes:
alliances, business intelligence, business models, competitors, customers, design,
funding, human capital, information, innovation, intellectual property, knowledge,
investment, leadership, learning, legal issues, licensing, markets, marketing, media,
processes, products, project portfolios, regulations, research, risk, sales, statistics,
strategy, technology, training, trends, value chains and many other.
• The need for effective interaction between many types of actors (stakeholders):
personnel from production, marketing, sales, design, R&D, human resources, finance
and other areas; personnel from different geographical locations and cultures;
stockholders; customers, suppliers, regulating agencies, community representatives;
strategic allies; etc.
• The need for effective interaction between several disciplines: relevant branches of
engineering, management sciences, law, psychology, sociology, communications,
economics, etc.
• The need for effective communication between internal, often-conflicting cultures:
business, productive-operational, marketing-sales, traditional-familiar, professional
cultures, country or regional cultures, etc.
• The need for an active search for changes in the prevailing culture: from cultures of
adaptation to cultures of innovation; and
• The fact that everything is connected with everything else: the above-mentioned
elements do not work in isolation but show strong inter-dependencies, and the
relationships among them are so numerous and diverse that cannot be counted.

The managerial question that arises with regard to these problems is how to meet all
these needs in practice. Some kind of management system will normally be designed and
implemented, to lead an innovation process for meeting such needs and keeping them met
over time. This question is, therefore, one of design and implementation.

2 The essential condition: requisite variety

The general problem of complexity management was stated originally by Ross Ashby.
His Law of Requisite Variety (Ashby, 1956) establishes the conditions under which any
particular situation in the real world can be brought under control by some appropriate
control unit. For this purpose a measure of complexity is specified, which is called
variety. The varieties of the situation and the control unit are the respective numbers of
distinguishable states in which they can be. Ashby’s law states that in order to have the
situation under control, the variety of the control unit must be at least as large as the
variety of the situation. For instance, a first-division football team beats a second-division
one because its players have available a much larger repertoire of moves, i.e., display a
greater variety. This law is always in force: it is a logical law and cannot be violated.
We may now restate our original question about high-complexity problems. Since
they have exceedingly high varieties, the only way to make them manageable is by
designing and implementing similarly high-variety management systems for them. The
managerial question becomes, then, how can such high-variety systems be actually
designed and implemented in practice.

2
3 Current practice: three common-sense approaches and their failure
Complexity is a key characteristic of the current world, and it is not surprising that a
significant number of schools of thought deal at present with this subject. Edgar Morin
(2001) has developed a philosophy around this matter that is highly influential in Europe:
‘Complex Thinking’. Stafford Beer (1993) built his well-known ‘Viable System Model’
upon Ashby’s (1956) law of complexity. Stacey (2001) and his colleagues focus on
complex responsive processes. The Santa Fe Institute (www.santafe.edu) has been doing
trans-disciplinary research on complexity sciences over the last 25 years.
Yet, when we come down (or up?) to the practical realities of the world the situation
looks dismal. None of this scientific or philosophical work seems to have permeated to
the actual practice of managers who must deal with high-complexity problems on a daily
basis. Take the case of road crashes, which are killing 1.2 million people and leaving 50
million people injured every year (WHO/World Bank, 2004). This situation should not be
surprising after a recent review by the author (Del Valle, 2010a, pp. 5-7), which showed
that the road-safety management approaches being used in the middle-income and lower-
income countries have, at most, a low chance of considering the key elements of this
problem –all relevant actors, disciplines, issues and cultures–, and of searching actively
for the required changes in culture. A new approach advocated by the World Bank and
based on developed country experiences (Bliss and Breen, 2009) does have the required
capacities, but may be quite expensive. By comparison, the PI Model did show a very
high cost-effectiveness relationship in this field, as shown in section 6.
High-complexity problems are pressing, and managers and policy makers are
permanently trying to deal with them by using the existing approaches and tools. We
have found that they normally use three common-sense approaches, or a combination of
them. They are:
• Simplification: The reduction of the high-complexity problem to the dimensions and
variables that the manager or policy maker understands, or has enough power to
influence. Ideology-based design is, among others, a form of simplification.
• Analysis: The reduction of the high-complexity problem to the dimensions and
variables that are considered relevant by the specific discipline or body of knowledge
on which the analysis is based. This approach may be combined with model building
activities, for mathematical description and increased processing capacity.
• Trial and error: The reduction of the high-complexity problem to the dimensions
and variables that may be considered in a specific experience, which is taken as a
case from which learning will be obtained for subsequent experiences.

It is easy to realize that none of these approaches is able to meet the requirement
established by Ashby’s law. They lack the capacity to match the actual complexity of the
problems, because they in fact reduce their complexity to what can actually be handled
by the understanding of the leading managers and/or the tools of the analysts. This leads
in practice to ineffective management, slow and conflictive change processes, and low
success rates. No established practice seems to exist, either scientific or professional, that
may deal with this class of problems in their whole complexity, i.e., without resource to
some sort of reductionism or simplification.
4 The grounds of the PI Model: the ‘complexity-participation’ principle and
the ‘action mapping’ logic
Going beyond common sense, the central idea of the Participatory Innovation Model is
not to simplify but rather to deal with the whole complexity of the situation and to
consider it as a significant source of wealth. The Model builds up in practice the requisite
variety, to face high-complexity problems, by means of five elements:
• The ‘complexity-participation’ principle and its notion of ‘strong participation’.
• The ‘action mapping’ logic, which makes high-complexity systems understandable
and manageable.
• Its ten operational principles for generating the required working conditions.
• Its three high-variety tools, which are based on natural language.
• The eight-step ‘Participatory Innovation’ process.

We will deal in this section with the first two elements. The other three will be left for
the final part of the paper. Five case studies with applications of the PI Model will be
presented in between.

The ‘complexity-participation’ principle and ‘strong participation’

The author proposed originally this theoretical principle in his doctoral dissertation (Del
Valle, 1992). In terms of Ashby’s law, it states that high complexity can in principle be
effectively matched if the real-world actors can be mobilized for building up the required,
high-variety management system. It is based on the fact that no one can better describe
the real world, as it is, than the people who experience it day after day and know it from
practice. The key source of knowledge is the actual experience of the actors, rather than
the interpretations of the world provided by experts or analysts. The use of the actors’
experiences is also a great source of motivation and legitimacy for the action to be
undertaken.
A word must be said about the notion of participation in this approach, which is
labeled ‘strong participation’ (Del Valle, 2010b). Notice first that a common usage of the
term participation refers to situations such as attending some event, being consulted about
a specific subject, voting among a few alternatives, being present at an assembly or being
a member of a focus group. In such instances the conveners have defined the ground in
advance, so that the individual has no chance of making any significant difference; such
are instances of weak participation. Strong participation, on the contrary, is what happens
when people are convened to create a future relevant to them, in a context of free and
effective interaction with other people similarly convened. It is the interactive co-
creation of reality by its relevant actors. It is a process that multiplies capacities, enriches
ideas, humanizes people and dignifies them. With appropriate methods and tools it can be
highly effective and yield realistic outputs. It can also be very attractive and fun for those
convened.

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The ‘action-mapping’ logic
The ‘complexity-participation’ principle states where the requisite variety comes from, so
that the whole complexity of the real world is considered. We discuss now where such
variety goes to, i.e. the management system itself. The question is: on what bases should
the participants provide their contents, and should such contents be handled and used, so
that a high-variety management system may actually be designed? The IP Model’s
answer is provided by the ‘action mapping’ logic.1 This logic provides the rationale for a
methodical, participatory activity in which an action-oriented representation of the high-
complexity system is built, by using a tool called ‘action map’. The following elements
characterize the ‘action map’ and its logic:
• It is built by a workshop of around 25 participants, who should be representative of
all types of relevant actors; a ‘Group of Conveners’ chooses them. No preparatory
documents are used and the full ‘action map’ emerges from the interaction of the
participants, who work only in plenary session. An external, fully trained facilitator
leads the session.2
• The ‘action map’ describes the world through the action that takes place in it, both
actual and potential, rather than through analytical categories provided by specialists.
• By using action as the common working ground, rather than the specific distinctions
of any discipline, it is capable of handling trans-disciplinary work effectively.
• It describes the world in the common language of the actors, rather than the
specialized and often cryptic language of the experts. The actors, who work through
intuition, easily understand it.
• It uses natural language, with its full semantic wealth and its real-world ambiguities,
instead of the highly focused and precise language of mathematics.
• It consists in a set of basic ‘lines of action’, which are made of more specific ‘lines
of action’. This recursive logic makes the ‘action map’ a high-variety tool and allows
it to describe in principle any degree of complexity.
• The basic lines of action provide the structure of the ‘action map’, which emerges
from the participatory process, under the control of the participants, and is not
imposed a priori by anybody. Such basic lines are orthogonal or transversal to one
another and must not be merged, to avoid imposing some blindness and impairing
the future.
• Each basic line of action is one dimension of the multi-dimensional innovation space
that corresponds to the high-complexity problem being dealt with. Such innovation
space is unique and has been defined by the relevant actors. Action maps usually
have between 8 and 15 dimensions; the number of dimensions is a measure of their
complexity.

1
We can only provide here some basic elements about this logic. See the detailed theoretical
tratment of the subject in Del Valle, 1992. The practical development of the IP Model started in the
mid-1980’s and has been under way until now. It is reflected in the rest of the bibliography.
2
This workshop corresponds to the initial methodological steps of the IP Model. A larger group of
participants is incorporated in the following steps.
• At a deeper level of meaning, ‘action mapping’ amounts to a process of participatory
conceptualization of a complex social system, in which a new vision of the world
emerges. The whole group of actors owns such vision.

Section 9, below, includes an example of ‘action map’. It corresponds to one of the

cases to be presented in the coming sections of the paper.

5 Practical experiences with the PI Model: two business cases

Building innovation capacities in three business companies

Three mining suppliers in Chile participated in this experience: ARA WorleyParsons
(engineering), Drillco Tools (drilling tools) and ENAEX (blasting products and services).
They are all strong promoters of innovation in Chile’s mining cluster and are interested in
becoming ‘world class’ producers. The project operated from early 2009 to mid-2010,
with funding from a government subsidy and co-funding from the companies. Top
managers and a wide spectrum of professionals participated actively: around 60 in the
two larger companies and 30 in the smaller one (Drillco).
As shown in Figure 1, innovation capacity building was conceptualized as a transition
from a current state with sporadic generation of innovations to a desired state showing:
(1) continuous generation of innovations, (2) an innovation management system and (3) a
culture of innovation. In a developing country like Chile this transition occurs “against
the current” –as we named the book presenting the experience (Del Valle et. al, 2010)–
because it has to face the lack of innovativeness in the country’s culture as a whole.

Figure 1 “Innovating against the current”: the challenge of building innovation capacities
in non-developed countries, which lack innovativeness in their cultures

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 As a general outcome, in the three companies the processes for building innovation
capacities have become established on strong grounds; they are not completed, since
cultural changes take much longer than the 18-month limit of the subsidy. Specific
conclusions are: (a) the challenges faced by the three companies were the same, in spite
of wide differences in sizes, ownership, markets, products, technologies and organization;
(b) process innovation is 9.3 times more relevant than product innovation, if measured by
the number of projects identified; (c) strong participation is highly productive: project
portfolios of 40 to 50 items, rich conceptual project designs, and more; (d) innovation
capacity is multi-dimensional: in each company it involved 8 dimensions, which came
out unique for each company; (e) the process led to clear awareness of the key
contradiction between innovation and operations, and to subsequent motivation for
action; (f) innovation projects need a protected space; (g) innovation management
systems came out different for each company; (h) special communications needs arose;
(i) a specialized, process-focused metrics is needed for innovation capacity building; and
(j) close connections exist between innovation capacity building and strategic
management. Specific conclusions were also obtained for the Chilean public policy on
business innovation.

Reducing environmental impacts of a copper smelter and refinery

Ventanas Copper Smelter and Refinery is located in the coastal area of Valparaíso, Chile.
In the early 1990’s it was required by the new environmental norms to drastically reduce
its negative impacts on the atmosphere. In addition to some key changes in technology,
an environmental quality plan, including a management system, was designed and
implemented with the PI Model. Active participants were some 100 engineers and other
professionals, including the whole executive team. The complexity of the problem was
shown to involve 14 dimensions, and 140 specific projects were identified and designed
conceptually in 1996-97. Technical design of the projects and implementation followed
immediately, and impacts were evaluated five years later, in 2001.
The evaluation of the experience showed the following (Del Valle, 2001): (a) the
management system, which involved the whole executive team, had worked flawlessly
and all 14 dimensions of the plan were fully operational, with more than 100 innovations
completed or under way; (b) this included the R&D dimension, for which no project had
been prioritized on the assumption that this was not a business company role; (c) a new,
active dimension had been added, i.e., ISO 14,001 certification; (d) all innovations were
carried out with internal knowledge and no external consulting was needed; (e) all
innovations were carried out by the operations personnel, without leaving their posts; (f)
consequently, the plan had involved no incremental human-resources costs; and (g) as a
joint result of the changes in technology and the environmental quality plan, the required
reduction in emissions had been fully achieved.
6 Practical experiences with the PI Model: two public policy cases

The national policy for road safety in Chile

Chile’s deaths in road traffic crashes had been growing steadily since 1985. In 1993 the
government undertook the design and implementation of a national road safety policy,
under the leadership of the Ministry of Transport and having 8 ministries and the national
police in the role of conveners; the policy’s methodology was the PI Model. More than
200 people (transport engineers, psychologists, police officers, psychologists, bus drivers,
truck companies, judges and many other) participated actively. The complexity of the
National Road Safety System was shown to involve 9 dimensions and the process led to
the identification of 130 innovation projects. A National Road Safety Commission was
established to lead the process.
The key impacts of Chile’s road safety policy (Del Valle, 2007; Del Valle, 2010a) are
illustrated in Figure 2. They are: (a) the growth trend in fatalities was broken: fatalities
fell in the first five years and have subsequent remained even; (b) such a trend change can
only attributed to this policy: Chile’s economy –including its transport sector– grew
steadily while fatalities showed the opposite trend; (c) in comparative terms, Chile’s
fatalities per 100,000 population fell from 13 in 1985 to 10 in 1999, and have remained at
this level, which is the average for high-income countries (WHO, 2009, p. ix); (d) it is
estimated, against a business-as-usual case, that some 8,000 lives were saved and some
80,000 people were saved from injuries, in this country of 16 million; (e) on the world
scale, this impact amounts to saving 3 million lives and saving 30 million or more people
from injuries in ten years; (f) the cost-effectiveness of this policy was very high: while
the total cost for period 1994-2009 amounts only to US$ 20 million, the benefit for the
lives and injuries saved, under WHO and World Bank criteria, is equivalent to US$ 10
billion (Del Valle, 2010a, p. 12).

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 Figure 2 Impacts of Chile’s National Road Safety Policy

Chile’s National Energy Efficiency Program

“The crisis of Argentina-supplied gas that started in 2004 created conditions for
actively developing an Energy Efficiency (EE) policy in Chile; this 20-year-old
claim from several quarters was finally listened to by the political system. The
strategy adopted by the government involved three key elements: (a) making
visible the significant potential of EE for long-term energy sustainability; (b)
promoting the initiative by means of an enabling leadership style, which would
bring together into a common endeavor actors from government agencies, the
private sector and civil society; and (c) designing the policy and its key projects
through strong participation methods, i.e., the interactive co-creation of
visions, objectives and action instruments through a specialized set of concepts
and tools.” (Del Valle and Borregaard, 2009, p. 1)

The quoted set of concepts and tools is, of course, the PI Model. This application case
worked between 2005 and 2007. It was convened and steered by a multi-actor group
involving 8 ministries, 4 public agencies, 6 business associations and 3 civil society
organizations, and involved several hundreds of active participants. The national system
for energy efficiency, to be developed, was found to involve 15 dimensions.
Although impacts on energy demand are nor yet measurable, it is worth mentioning
achievements and impacts related to the process that has been set in motion (Ibid, pp. 19-
23): (a) the program was launched by the Presidency of the Republic; (b) more than 100
initiatives were promoted, in housing and buildings, transport, public administration,
mining, industry, home appliances, education and public communications; (c) an active
media presence was sought, with 230 items in three years, for the public positioning of
the ‘energy efficiency’ concept, which used to be confused with energy saving; (d) the
public budget for energy efficiency grew from US$ 0.1 million in 2005 to US$ 54 million
in 2010, and € 80 million for loans were committed by the German Financial Cooperation
for energy efficiency and renewables; (e) energy efficiency is already visible to the
public: more efficient bulbs than conventional ones in supermarkets, labeled refrigerators
in stores, a subsidy for exchanging inefficient electric motors in industry, and more; (f)
the energy efficiency program has become Chile’s Energy Efficiency Agency in the new
Ministry of Energy that started operations in 2010.

7 Practical experiences with the PI Model: a multi-country case

The Latin American Cooperation for Advanced Networks (CLARA)

Our final case, so far unpublished, deals with CLARA, a Latin American association of
advanced networks for research, innovation and education (www.redclara.net). It is the
counterpart of Asia-Pacific’s APAN, Canada’s CANARIE, Europe’s GÉANT2-TERENA
and USA’s Internet2, and was legally established in 2004. It includes 15 country
networks, which are physically connected through RedCLARA and have presently a joint
membership of around 1,000 universities and research centers that pay membership fees.
It was initially established with support from the European Commission.
A first development strategy was prepared in 2005-2006 by applying the PI Model. It
showed that CLARA has a complexity level of 8 dimensions and led to the conceptual
definition of 23 strategic projects.3 The successful implementation of these projects led
CLARA to obtaining subsequent support from the Inter-American Development Bank
and again from the European Commission. A second application of the PI Model, in
2009-2010, has allowed CLARA to design a new strategy for expansion of membership
to multinational IT companies and to thematic networks and communities from all over
the region; it includes 11 dimensions and 52 additional projects identified.4

8 The operational principles of the PI Model

We turn now to the practical questions that are raised by the ‘complexity-participation’
principle and the ‘action mapping’ logic: how to mobilize the actors to participate, how to
elicit their knowledge, how to systematize it and how to convert it into effective action.
The answer to the above questions is practical, and comes from a long series of
experiences in all sorts of fields, carried out over some 20 years of applications of the PI
Model. It is synthesized in a set of ten operational principles that will be mentioned but
not described. Such principles are (Del Valle, 1999, 2010a; Del Valle et. al., 2010):
• Understand innovation as a socio-cultural process, not just a technical-economic one.
• Declare the political intention to build a wide action system.

3
Unpublished report, Alfredo del Valle, Plan Estratégico de CLARA, Antigua, Buenos Aires y
Santiago, agosto 2005, 48 p.
4
Unpublished, preliminary report, Alfredo del Valle, Estrategia de Expansión de la membresía y el
impacto regional de CLARA, Santiago, septiembre 2010, 19 p.

10
• Aim at knowing and actualizing the whole potential involved.
• Mobilize a large and diverse number of people around this future-building task.
• Apply an enabling leadership style – not a domineering one.
• Let the real-world actors create – not just the experts.
• Use specialized tools to externalize people’s knowledge, which is tacit.
• Generate via participation a clear blueprint for the system to be built, i.e., the ‘action
map’.
• Implement a large number of inter-related and realistic projects.
• Set up a multi-actor management system.

The consistent application of these principles over an extended period of time should
produce a permanent stream of innovations. They would not be isolated, but make up a
coherent system of innovations that are mutually reinforcing.

9 The natural language-based tools of the PI Model

In section 4 we described the rationale of the ‘action map’ tool, and in section 6 we
presented the case of Chile’s National Road Safety Policy. Figure 3 presents the action
map that was prepared in this process.

Figure 3 The ‘action map’ of Chile’s national road safety system

The components of the Action Map are called lines of action and should be
understood as inter-dependent actions. There are 9 basic lines (A to I), which are on
boldface and correspond to the dimensions of road safety, and 57 specific lines (A-1 to I-
5) that provide contents and precision to the basic ones. Only 9 specific lines of action
(and no basic one) were considered established at the time, i.e., having actors in charge
and being able to make impact; they are presented in upper case letters. This map
provided the actors and policy makers with: (a) a diagnostic review of the degree of
development of the road safety system in Chile at the time, and (b) a clear and motivating
blueprint for the system to be developed.
The PI Model has two additional tools (Del Valle 1992, 1999, 2002 and 2007), the
‘potentiality profile’, for designing innovation projects and systematizing successful
experiences, and the ‘participatory workspace’ (PWS), for organizing inter-personal
networks in the Internet and for implementing knowledge management systems. They are
also high-variety tools, based on natural language, which are used in participatory
activities.

10 The eight-step ‘Participatory Innovation’ process

The Participatory Innovation process as a whole is shown in Figure 4.

Figure 4 The Participatory Innovation process

This is the process by means of which the PI Model mobilizes actors for co-creating
a continuous stream of innovations in a particular field. It involves the following
methodological steps:

12
• Constitution of a ‘Group of Conveners’ to provide overall guidance. 4 to 8 key
actors related to the high-complexity problem, who have the legitimacy to convene
all relevant actors, normally form it.
• Creation of a vision of development or strategic agenda by means of an ‘action
map’. The Group of Conveners selects participants in the corresponding workshop.
• Generation of ‘Project Portfolio’, following the basic lines of action, or dimensions,
of the ‘action map’. This is also done through participation and involves a proposal
of priorities. Such portfolios involve from some 40 to several hundred projects.
• Prioritizing initial projects for implementation and appointing project leaders. The
Group of Conveners does this step.
• Conceptual and technical design of the initial projects. The conceptual design is
done by means of the ‘potentiality profile’ tool.
• Incubation of the initial projects. Managerial and organizational support is provided
to them, until they can work on their own.
• Follow-up and guidance to the initial projects. The Group of Conveners takes this
step at the beginning; subsequently the Management System takes over.
• Design of the Innovations Management System. This step is taken once the
managerial needs are clear and a realistic and effective design can be made. This
system normally includes representatives of the key actors in its board and an
executive manager with a technical team.

The Innovations Management System becomes permanent over time and repeats the
steps required for the prioritization, design and implementation of subsequent projects. It
also undertakes follow-up and evaluation activities for the whole process. For purposes of
communications, coherence and knowledge sharing, the Management System may also
be establish a ‘participatory workspace’ (PWS).
The above steps show the ‘tangible’ outputs of the process, i.e., organizational units,
projects and similar elements. As shown in Figure 4 there are also significant ‘intangible’
outputs of the process, which are produced as a consequence of the use of ‘strong
participation’: awareness of the potential, motivation, trust, consensus building, a
common language, new leaderships, alliances and networks, and building of innovation
capacities. All these elements lead to the new culture that is sought, which is normally a
culture of innovation.

11 An opportunity for collaboration initiatives

Business companies, government agencies and networks can apply in practice the
concepts and tools of the PI Model, in a wide number of concrete problems that belong to
the “high-complexity” class: i.e., that involve large numbers of inter-dependent actors,
interests, issues, cultures and action possibilities. Researchers and scientists from
different fields and disciplines could also become interested in this approach to
complexity management that is non-analytic but participatory, and in its tools that are
supported on natural language –with all its wealth of meaning– rather than mathematics.
The author is interested in establishing cooperation initiatives around this Model.
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