Societal actors across scales and geographies increasingly demand visual applications of systems thinking – the process of understanding and changing the reality of a system by considering its whole set of interdependencies – to address complex problems affecting food and agriculture. Yet, despite the …

Empowerment is een centraal begrip in het hedendaagse pedagogisch denken en handelen. In dit artikel wordt empowerment besproken in het licht van de positieve psychologie: een stroming in de psychologie die bestudeerd hoe het welbevinden en optimaal functioneren van mensen kan worden bevorderd. In de …

SME production companies producing high variety/low volume discrete products face challenging customer demands. These result in complex planning issues due to the tension between optimizing a low volume flow and optimizing efficiency parameters. Current planning and control systems do not support this …

The methodology of biomimicry design thinking is based on and builds upon the overarching patterns that all life abides by. “Cultivating cooperative relationships” within an ecosystem is one such pattern we as humans can learn from to nurture our own mutualistic and symbiotic relationships. While form …

Health care is undergoing a profound technological and digital transformation and has become increasingly complex. It is important for burns professionals and researchers to adapt to these developments which may require new ways of thinking and subsequent new strategies. As Einstein has put it: “We must …

The purpose of this paper is to gain deeper insight into the practical judgements we are making together in ongoing organizational life when realizing a complex innovative technical project for a customer and so enrich the understanding of how customer orientation emerges in an organization. The outcome …

It seems to hold that organisms either remain small, flexible and adaptive, or become relatively strong and invulnerable by growing very large. Denmark vs America, or Iceland vs China. A single-celled animal, such as the slipper animalcule, has a very strong strategy, and although we have run into serious …

The Heating Ventilation and Air Conditioning (HVAC) sector is responsible for a large part of the total worldwide energy consumption, a significant part of which is caused by incorrect operation of controls and maintenance. HVAC systems are becoming increasingly complex, especially due to multi-commodity …

Key to reinforcement learning in multi-agent systems is the ability to exploit the fact that agents only directly influence only a small subset of the other agents. Such loose couplings are often modelled using a graphical model: a coordination graph. Finding an (approximately) optimal joint action for …