Emergence

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        Emergent phenomena arise as a consequence of the interactions between the constituent 
        units of a system. For example, a traffic jam is the emergent result of the interactions 
        between many drivers. On an individual level, each driver is trying to get somewhere and 
        is following (or breaking) certain rules, some legal (the speed limit) and others societal 
        (slow down to let another driver change into your lane); but a traffic jam is a separate 
        and distinct entity that emerges from those individual behaviors. Emergent phenomena are 
        unpredictable and often counterintuitive because they are properties of the whole that 
        cannot be reduced to the behavior of the parts. Gridlock on a highway, for example, can 
        travel backward for no apparent reason, even as cars move forward.
      
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        Examples of emergent phenomena in the business world include organizational behavior that 
        is shaped (or misshaped) through employee bonuses and incentives, markets in which prices 
        are set through the myriad interactions of buyers and sellers, or consumer buzz that 
        propels sleeper products into runaway successes. Icosystem captures emergent phenomena 
        through the use of agent-based simulation, a simulation modeling technique that models 
        each person ‧such as drivers on a highway or shoppers in a supermarket- as a distinct 
        individual. Agent-based simulation is the only way to analyze and understand emergent 
        phenomena because they model their formation from the bottom up, taking into account 
        interactions between agents that will generate emergent phenomena. See 
      
      
        <u>The Game <game.htm></u>
      
      
         for an illustration of an emergent phenomenon and how agent-based simulation can help 
        make sense of it.
      
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