The Complex Adaptive Enterprise: Self-Awareness and Sustainable Competitive Advantage using Bayesian Agencies

The complex adaptive enterprise can learn from and react to global events faster than the competition because of its self-awareness and its ability to adapt. An enterprise is self-aware if it understands the interdependencies between its own resources and how these resources and interdependencies contribute to its own competitive advantage. The complex adaptive enterprise then uses this understanding to adapt its business processes and strategies in order to sustain its competitive advantage. In this paper, we describe how simple software agents can be integrated into the enterprise in order to enable the enterprise to function as a complex adaptive enterprise. In our research, we developed Bayesian agencies, which are complex adaptive software systems consisting of simple agents implemented as re-usable components, which can be integrated into the business processes and strategy forming processes. These agencies are able to collectively mine the relationships between resources within the enterprise and the global behaviour of the enterprise in order for an enterprise to be self-aware. Depending on the mined relationships, the agencies can collectively take one or more actions in the enterprise, such as activating or modifying business processes, or participating in the formulation or changing of business or knowledge strategies.