Complex problems: What makes them complex and difficult to solve?

This paper discusses the topics of complex systems, complex adaptive systems, and complex problems. For network-centric warfare (NCW) using complex systems, it is necessary to develop collaborative technological systems that function within a cybernetic organismic network (CON) according to holistic systems engineering and nonlinear stochastic processes. Consequently, there are differences between how issues and problems are processed. Issues are people-oriented problems that interfere with technology development. Problems are related to technology itself and can be more easily resolved. To develop collaborative technology systems that function within a CON and perform NCW requires holistic systems engineering and nonlinear reasoning about agents thinking, learning, and adapting accordingly.

1. INTRODUCTION

To understand complex problems and the difficulty in solving them it is first important to understand the difference between a problem and an issue. Second, it is necessary to understand what might be described as a complex problem. Third, it is important to understand whether a desired outcome relating to a complex problem is realizable and practicable. Fourth, it must be understood that what makes a complex problem complicated is the lack of an adequate way to define, describe, and categorize the problem; the lack of agreement about what the problem is and whether it is actually a problem or an issue; and the lack of an adequate way to determine a definitive, descriptive, and categorical process which creates a path for relating the problem to new knowledge creation and discovery or to something already understood though its relationship to the new problem is not yet obvious.