Purepost Learnings from the use of Systems Science

In the beginning of our journey, we first learned that while our problem was easy to define, it was embedded in an extremely complex open system environment, which was populated by numerous individual system stakeholders. These stakeholders were individually trying to solve various aspects of the problem using Sustaining Innovation. Sustaining Innovation depends on single loop learning and is characterized by stakeholders that think that their problem resides in a simple closed system, walled off from an external environment. Sustaining Innovation refines existing organizational capabilities and focuses on incremental improvement. Sustaining Innovation is essentially the function of altering what individuals are currently doing, improving something that is already possible in our current reality (i.e., making something better, different, or more). Finally, Sustaining Innovation uses old problem-solving rules, a one-dimensional problem-solving approach and often relies on existing “big data technology” capabilities.

Through systems science, we could also look at the problem from a big-picture perspective and realize early on that the Purepost solution could not simply be an extension of what others had tried. Examples include the countless military-to-civilian specialty code conversion tables, the military transition assistance program (TAP) occupational code (MOC) crosswalk solution provided by the US Department of Labor, individual state agencies, and The O*NET Online Resource Center. In other words, our solution had to break down natural language barriers and create accurate skill translations to build understanding and relationships between two distinct worlds, the US Military World and the US Civilian World.

Our most significant learning from the system science discipline was to harness the power of both Breakthrough Innovation and Disruptive Innovation. These types of innovation feed off double-loop and triple-loop learning (Figure 2, Levels/Loops of Organizational Learning), which can thrive in Complex Open Systems. A Complex Open System is an inherent part of the environment. This type of system has external interactions that can take the form of information, energy, or material transfers into or out of the system boundary, depending on the discipline that defines the concept. Both Breakthrough and Disruptive Innovation are about double-loop learning and triple-loop learning because these types of learning address changing organizational governing rules or the governing context. Double-loop and triple-loop learning reframe and transform how we think about problems and create new insights. We chose to use a combination of these two types of innovation because Breakthrough Innovation intends to focus on easily defined problems with complex and multidisciplinary solutions, which are ideal for collaborative events like hackathons. In contrast, Disruptive Innovation deals with emerging technologies that begin as unsophisticated prototypes and evolve to replace established technologies by meeting previously unserved needs.

Purepost's Complex Open System Perspective

Purepost’s Complex Open System Perspective illustrates how we Solved the Problem (Figure 3). The Complex Open System provides a visual understanding of how the veteran language barrier and skill transparency are embedded in a complex open system. It also illustrates how the critical elements of the problem-solving process ideally operate in this type of system, including how double-loop and triple-loop learning aid in reframing how we think about problems, creating new insights, creating new principles, and how to learn and get breakthrough results.