Abstract
Enterprises are dynamical systems, formed by a semantic web of active servers of two kinds: Carbon-based servers, normally called Humans, and silicon-based servers, called Computers. These active elements change the state of the world through their individual and collective orchestrated networked actions, in real time. All an enterprise "does" is the sum total of the actions of its active servers. No more, no less! An Enterprise is an entity by itself, whose existence is associated with intentions, missions, goals and purposes that are in some degree shared by its active elements and inform the prescribed organizational elements of its structures. An Enterprise is under permanent change, due to external and internal conditions, and the enacted changes occur either by spontaneous actions of its active servers or by intentional systemic change that propagates top-down and is purposefully adopted by the baseline servers. This talk will show how relevant is the Engineering Body of Knowledge of Systems Theory and Dynamic Systems Control and the formal principles and methods of Enterprise Engineering to model, design and operate Enterprises and in particular, how to steer top-down strategic transformations and to combine them with adaptive bottom-up emergent adaptive phenomena.
José Tribolet is Full Professor of Information Systems at the Department of Computer Science and
Engineering (DEI) and at the Department of Engineering and Management (DEG) (Joint
Appointment) at the Instituto Superior Técnico (IST), Technical University of Lisbon,
Portugal. He is senior researcher at the Information Systems Group at INESC-ID and
promoter of the Centre for Organizational Design & Engineering at INESCINOV. He is
the coordinator of POSI-E3, the Professional Post-Graduate course in Information Systems
and Enterprise Engineering of IST (3rd Degree Bologna Diploma). He serves presently
as Chairman of the Department of Computer Science and Engineering (DEI/IST).
Dr. Tribolet holds a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from MIT
(1977). He was a member of the research staff of Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill, NJ,
from 1977 through 1979. He spent a full sabbatical year (1997–98) at MIT's Sloan School
of Management. He was a guest professor at IWI-the Institute for Information Management
of the University of St. Gallen, in Switzerland, during the spring term of 2012.
He founded in 1980 the first non-state owned research institute in Portugal, INESC
— Institute for Systems and Computer Engineering. INESC is today a holding of six
research institutes nationwide, three of them having become formal Associated Laboratories
of the Portuguese Science System. Dr. Tribolet is the President of INESC. He has been
Chairman of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Chairman and
Vice-President for Post-Graduate Studies of the Department of Computer Science and
Engineering of IST. He is a founding member of the Portuguese Engineering Academy
and a founder of the Informatics Engineering College of the Portuguese Engineers Professional
Association.