We are pleased to announce that Stephen Brewis will be leading our first webinar in the 2025-2026 Series, on September the 3rd, 5-6:30 pm, British summertime, on 'Staying Yourself While Becoming Something New'.

We will be providing details of the rest of this year's general webinars and VSM practitioners' webinars in the near future.

How can organisations adapt without losing their core identity? This session introduces Institutional Capital in Play (ICIP) as the engine of purposeful adaptation, powered by a dynamic, modular Viable System Model (VSM) for on-the-fly restructuring. SenseMaker acts as the perception layer, comparing the live operating plan to a reference model to generate the surprises that fuel adaptation.

We integrate first-order cybernetics as the transactional steering system — executing today’s operating plan — with second-order cybernetics as the conversational direction finder — reshaping the organisation’s course through reflective dialogue.

Flex functions as a chemo-tactic switch between homeostasis and homeorhesis, activating a form change only when essential variables risk breaching their viable bounds. This ensures change is neither premature nor delayed.  

Reflecting on my past role as Chief Research Scientist in Organisational Science at BT, I share how the company navigated the shift from fixed-line to mobile communications — preserving its essential identity while transforming its form. We introduce the Cyberesque Identity – COx Index as a practical tool for mapping organisational behaviour along a stability–creativity spectrum, and connect these ideas to the function–form distinction at both organisational and individual levels.

Stephen J Brewis

Chartered Engineer (CEng)
Honorary Fellow, The Cybernetics Society
Honorary Visiting Fellow, Manchester Business School

Stephen Brewis is an organisational scientist, systems thinker, and innovation leader with a career spanning some of the world’s most complex adaptive enterprises. As Chief Research Scientist in Organisational Science at British Telecom, he led groundbreaking work on resilience, identity, and cybernetic design — insights forged during the company’s transformational shift from fixed-line to mobile communications.

Today, Stephen is CEO of The Infinite Game, where he applies second-order cybernetics, the Viable System Model (VSM), and active inference to help organisations adapt their structures, strategies, and operating plans in real time. He is the creator of Institutional Capital in Play (ICIP) — a methodology for activating latent organisational potential — and has pioneered the use of dynamic, modular VSM modelling combined with SenseMaker to detect and respond to surprise.

His work bridges the transactional steering of first-order cybernetics with the conversational direction finding of second-order thinking, enabling organisations to stay themselves while becoming something new. 

To register to any webinar, follow this link and provide your email. You will receive immediately the link to the webinar- which you can copy to your calendar.

Registration link:

https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZYrc-6orTIpE93LPq621YbrVdLr1sIF4afh

You can watch all the recordings of the previous webinars   on our webinar recordings webpage:
 
https://metaphorum.org/webinar-recordings

There's a very interesting exhibition on cybernetics currently being run until October 18th  in Frankfurt .

The exhibition explores the intersection of art and cybernetics, emphasizing the interconnectedness of systems in society and nature.

• The exhibition runs from June 4 to October 18, 2025.
• It features works from various artists, including Heba Y. Amin, John Baldessari, and VALIE EXPORT.
• The concept of cybernetics is presented as a "communicative metascience" that connects different disciplines.
• The exhibition aims to highlight the complexity of art as a system that reflects societal issues and engages with scientific inquiries.

Four Key Themes of the Exhibition

The exhibition is structured around four main themes that explore different aspects of communication and systems.

• Perception and Language: Examines communication as a complex system.
• Human and Computer Interaction: Focuses on communication with machines.
• Self-Organized Systems: Investigates the relationship between nature and the environment.
• Social Systems: Explores self-reflection within societal contexts.

Contact and Visitor Information

Essential contact details and visitor information for the Kunststiftung DZ BANK are provided.

• Address: Platz der Republik, 60325 Frankfurt am Main.
• Free admission to the exhibition and events.
• Public transport access via "Platz der Republik" station.
• Opening hours: Tuesday to Saturday, 11 AM to 7 PM.