The Effects of Complexity on the Product-Service Shift

There are many challenges facing businesses in the modern commercial climate. One challenge is the 'product-service shift', whereby organisations go from delivering a product to the provision of through-life availability of an instantiated capability. This will have implications for any organisation in the processes and procedures it employs, especially for knowledge and information management. Whilst it is true that there is a large technical content within the area of knowledge and information management, it is still, essentially, a human and organisational issue. This is the focus of the KIM (Knowledge and Information Management – through life) Grand Challenge. This paper will introduce the KIM project and aims. Focus will be on a particular area of research within the project, concerned with decision-making, decision support and human aspects of such systems. Ongoing studies within this research are discussed, looking at the bid stage for major aerospace projects and at decision networks within flagship construction projects. The implications of complexity, in its organisational guises of intrinsic and induced complexity will be discussed. There is a discussion on how the limited information horizon contributes to (often unwanted) emergent behaviour as projects progress, and how decision-making systems may be configured to help cope with issues of complexity and the surprises such emergent behaviour can manifest.