aidencholes

The Narrative Lab and Cogntive Edge are pleased to announce their partnership with the University of Stellenbosch Business School to pursue joint research programmes and delivery of courses in South Africa. Recently Cognitive Edge (CE), The Narrative Lab (TNL) and the University of Stellenbosch Business School (USB) established a partnership with two purposes: *  Provision of SenseMaker® and support services for research purposes on selected programmes at USB *  Joint conduct of a Cognitive Edge accreditation workshop at the University [...]

As I've been going through my preparations for presenting the narrative component of the Cognitive Edge accreditation course with the Singapore Civil Service Agency, the difference between developing and developed nation governments has me wondering about who has the luxury to effectively address complex problems? Typically a developing nation has to deal with all the issues associated with development i.e. service delivery, effeciency and governance AS WELL AS the unpredictable complex challenges that surface, such as the global economic meltdown [...]

In South Africa it is taboo to refer to "problems". This is especially true if you are a representative of government.  "No, no, no Mr Interviewer ... I would not say it is a problem. Rather we are faced with a challenge." People fear that they are in some way resigning themselves to the "un-solvability" of the problem if they utter the very word. Behind this fear lies a a fatalistic way of languaging the issue at hand. Instead, the rhetoric [...]

The study of complexity has typically found a home within specific disciplines, such as science, philosophy, cognitive science, anthropology and to a lesser extent evolutionary psychology. This landscape intrigues me as you will rarely find a psychologist among a group of complexity thinkers and practitioners. You'll find natural scientists and philosophers in the main. I think this is because the role of psychology in understanding complexity has not received much attention. Complexity is firmly an issue of psychology as well [...]

We often find that people use the word "complexity" in a range of settings. Most often it is used by your average person on the street to describe a situation or technology that escapes their understanding. And so, in this colloquial use you will hear people lament and say things like, "What can we do? It's so complex." A great analogy thatPaul Cilliers, the elder statesman of complexity in South Africa, uses is of his mother's struggle with bank ATMs. [...]

Something interesting happens when you ask someone to share an experience (narrative) AND then ask them to tell you what that story means. Often you'll find that the interpretive layer that a storyteller will construct about their story covers more than what the story itself addresses. The danger of taking a story at face value is emphasized because of this dynamic. Try and visualise what happens here ... Someone tells a story of an experience that they, or someone they [...]

The Water Research Commission have been a long standing client of ours. Typically investing in technical water research, the WRC have been venturing out more into social science research and our narrative methodology has been a nice fit in that strategy. Our main project with the WRC is investigating the dynamics of stakeholder engagement. The study site is down in George, where we have a Masters student (Aner Vlok) assisting us. We recently ran a series of knowledge dissemination workshops [...]