the systems that you are part of and that you care about are complex they're made up of many independent and connected parts and they're adaptive their parts are constantly adjusting refining converting integrating based on what is happening in the world around them the study of complex adaptive systems or cast can help us understand the world and think in new ways to solve problems for we looked at complex systems like these and wondered how do they work how do millions of birds collectively flying in One Direction turn in an instant and all begin flying in another Direction initially we assumed that it must be the result of some amazingly efficient leadership structure where an alpha bird of some kind gave Crystal Clear directives to the flock we soon learned that there was no leader there were only Simple Rules that each bird followed according to what its nearest local neighbors were [Music] doing remember there is no leader no bird has overall command and control there is no global scale awareness of the whole system it is just a whole mess of birds words and a few simple rules that they follow what we are seeing is a remarkable phenomenon called a super organism A system that is made up of hundreds thousands or even millions of individual organisms but that acts like it is a single organism we can learn a lot about how to design and Implement complex adaptive systems from the experts from nature things like ants birds and fish here's an example of simple rules leading to complex behaviors in a human system simple but with a big effect all human systems are complex adaptive systems too we are independent agents following local Simple Rules leading to emergent complexity sometimes it can be hard to see the rules but they are there and if you understand them deeply you can see that they are amazingly simple