Every manager tries to make sense of the world it inhabits (organizations, markets, public policies, etc.) using some form, often implicit, of theory. These theories are largely based upon:

• past experiences
• heuristics (practices which worked, or seemed to work)
• formal knowledge
• analogies

For example, in the old days it was frequent for managers (more than for trainers!) to look at their company as a kind of machine, which should work in an ordered and predictable way. The turbulences in technology and markets have swept away this illusion, which perhaps survives in some enclaves. Other popular sources of inspiration for analogies and metaphors have been cybernetics, systems science, biology.

Anyway, it is on the basis of such implicit or explicit "theories" that the different situations are interpreted, and decisions are taken. Complex systems science allows one to make use of all these different knowledge sources, relating them in a meaningful way.

It actually allows one to see and to interpret important phenomena which might otherwise be unnoticed or regarded as disturbances, like for the example the spontaneous organizational forms which appear in a company, different from (although interacting with) any organization chart.

Another example is that of sudden changes which take place in companies, markets and social organizations: they are usually heralded by some features which are similar in different systems, and which can be properly dealt with in the context of complex systems science. Although forecasting such big changes in advance still remains an elusive task, the knowledge of how this happens in different kinds of system can make managerss better aware of this possibility and more attentive to catch its anticipatory signals.