Patterned interactions in complex systems

Jan W. Rivkin

Scholars who view organizational, social, and technological systems as sets of interdependent decisions have increasingly used simulation models from the biological and physical sciences to examine system behavior. These models shed light on an enduring managerial question: how much exploration is necessary to discover a good configuration of decisions? We develop simple, intuitive rules of thumb that allow a decision maker to examine two interaction patterns and determine which requires greater investment in broad exploration.