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✈️ Jumbo Jets & Mayonnaise 🥚
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What’s the difference between complicated and complex?
I enjoyed hearing this straightforward comparison between complex and complicated in a talk by Professor Mary Uhl-Bien.
She refers to Paul Cillier’s analogy that a jumbo jet is complicated: equal to the sum of its parts, whereas mayonnaise is complex: once mixed, you can’t separate the parts fundamentally changed by the interaction.
It is often useful to distinguish between the notions “complex” and “complicated.” A jumbo jet is complicated, a mayonnaise is complex (a least for the French). A complicated system is something we can model accurately (at least in principle). Following this line of thought, one may argue that the notion “complex” is merely a term we use for something we cannot yet model.
The quote is from Paul Cillier’s work found here “What can we learn from a theory of complexity?“.
What does this have to do with learning, leadership and innovation?
Firstly, when we share this understanding (mental model) with others, we can be…
