Innovation Systems are Self-organizing Complex Adaptive Systems

Creativity and innovation can be viewed as Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS) phenomena that occur at dif-ferent scales, including individual, group, and organi-zation levels. It is conjectured that at the collective level, creativity and innovation can be conceptualized as emergent properties of a system of interacting agents within a CAS. To illustrate the utility of the proposed approach, CAS mechanisms and principles are substan-tiated in terms of the structure and dynamics of a spe-cific form of user innovation community, called Open Source Software (OSS) development. Specifically, evo-lution processes that involve variation and selection through professional attention are conceptualized using various organizational design configurations (i.e., net-work membership, structure) and governance mecha-nisms (i.e., coordination, conflict resolution, and deci-sion making) to mimic the co-evolution of the project and the community. The paper concludes by propos-ing a set of proxy metrics that can be used to evalu-ate emergent system of interactions and organizational structures in OSS communities to measure their innova-tion output, as well as potential