Engineering complexity: because it works !

Why do we build complex products, like smart phones, AI, or Hermix?

Because complexity works. It delivers benefits and value, to the economy and society. And this is particularly true of modern engineering. We build complex products, for complex organizations, even if sometimes more fragile, or expensive, or risky. Because they work. These are thoughts about product and engineering complexity, from our Hermix webinar of 27. Nov 2024, with Arian Turhani, VP Capgemini for European institutions, and Alin Izvoran, public procurement expert: AI for public procurement and sales. Complexity has 2 major aspects: structural, and dynamic. Structural complexity means composed of many varied interrelated parts. A modern car has thousands of interdependent components. A modern AI neural network has hundreds of billions, even a trillion nodes. Dynamic complexity relates to uncertainty and ambiguity. It is characterized by emergence, nonlinearity, adaptiveness, propagation, chaos. This is where we get Taleb’s black swans and Lorenz’ butterfly effects. These systems are difficult to predict and control, even if we have sufficient information about their components. It was Aristotle who first described the phenomenon of really complex environments, 2300 years ago, as he famously said that the whole is not only more, but in fact it is different than the sum of the parts. And some of the effects of complexity are positive. The whole is not only different, but also better. These complexity manifestations also occur in relation to modern engineering technology. This is also what we are also building with Hermix. We build more than a tool with significant economic and efficiency benefits. We build a complex ecosystem. We create a new paradigm, with policy implications; such as increase in transparency and competition. We help create a better market environment.

Full video on Hermix website.