Welcome to the Intelligence Age: an examination of intelligence as a complex venture emergent behavior

Abstract

Purpose

Aid knowledge management (KM) and business intelligence (BI) practitioners explore and exploit the Intelligence Age complex venture model focusing on intelligence as an emergent behavior. The paper aims to extend the discrete model used by classical system engineering (SE) for a wisdom, knowledge, information, data, and measurement (WKIDM) pyramid to add a wrapper of emergent intelligence to support successful decision making and implementation.

Design/methodology/approach

Building on previous theoretical complex venture work, this research explores the value of extending the WKIDM or “Knowledge Pyramid” model proposed by classical SE and KM approaches. The resultant IWKIDM model builds on the insights derived from chaos and complexity theories; KM research; observations of several acquisition successes and failures; and doctoral research on agile enterprise decision support.

Findings

The paper finds that successful classical SE complicated systems models built with the closed system assumptions of linearity, predictability, and context independence do not scale to the needed open system Intelligence Age solutions. It is necessary to build on a Complex Venture model that guides the engineering solutions that: leverage emergent behavior insights to develop an improved intelligence model for the interaction of complex venture intellectual capital (i.e., self‐organizing agents) with the WKIDM pyramid entities and the intelligence products consumer context; and examine WKIDM pyramid levels of abstraction for detachable and complex representations (e.g., explicit versus tacit knowledge).

Originality/value

A complex venture conceptual model informs the architecture and systems engineering acquisition practices for new solution category to empower the venture's intellectual capital to produce needed emergent intelligence.

Citation

Vandergriff, L.J. (2008), "Welcome to the Intelligence Age: an examination of intelligence as a complex venture emergent behavior", VINE, Vol. 38 No. 4, pp. 432-444. https://doi.org/10.1108/03055720810917697