Tom Flanagan

SDD Mentor Tom Flanagan Role(s) Advisory Board Member N.E.T.S. Board of Trustees N.E.T.S. Academic Staff Affiliation(s) Director of Leadership and Systemic Innovation PhD program at the Buenos Aires Institute of Technology President of Syntony Quest Faculty member for the Organizational Systems Renewal program at Bainbridge Graduate Institute in Seattle, Washington Education M.Sc. Invertebrate Physiology, University of Massachusetts Amherst, MA, USA, 1975 B.Sc. Marine Biology & Chemistry, University of Massachusetts , North Dartmouth, MA, USA, 1973 MBA/M.Sc. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA, 1995 Ph.D. Neurobiology , Wesleyan University, Middletown, CT, USA, 1982 Achievements Co-founder of the science of dialogic design

Tom Flanagan is one of the Mentors in the Science of Dialogic Design of the Reinventing Democracy project.

Tom Flanagan is president of the Institute for 21st Century Agoras, the umbrella institution responsible for the development of the Science of Dialogic Design and the monitoring of world-wide SDDP application. The Agoras was founded by Aleco Christakis and has on its Board several experts involved in this project, including Yiannis Laouris, President of Future Worlds Center, Ken Bausch, Kevin Dye, Peter Jones and Reynaldo Treviño. From his position as President, Tom supports and collaborates intensively with Future Worlds Center. For example, he has been Faculty member and instructor during the 2nd and the 3rd International SDDP Summer schools.

Tom has also published The Talking Point: Creating an Environment for Exploring Complex Meaning together with Aleco Christakis

Short Bio

Tom Flanagan is president of the Institute for 21st Century Agoras. He is also founder and director of the SouthCoast Community Collaborative Design Studio in Southeastern Massachusetts. He is a board member and officer of the corporation of the Barrington Public Library, and has serveed on the Barrington School Board, the New Bedford Economic Development Council, the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth Alumni Council, and the Massachusetts Office of Dispute Resolution and Public Collaboration,

Tom’s background includes a doctorate in neurobiology with research, publications and patents from work he has led within academic and corporate R&D groups. His management training from MIT’s Sloan School focused on partnership development. He has worked in many highly innovative technical teams, and has founded and led non-profit and for profit ventures. He has taught university students in business management, engineering, chemistry and biology, and he has pioneered an international online course in Democracy and Sustainability.

Tom’s recent management work has focused on university-industry-government linkages related to sustainable, technology-based regional economic development. His current design mission is tobring democratic design practices that have been validated in many organizations into broad civic use throughout the greater New Bedford area.

Book Publications

• Body Wisdom in Dialogue (TR Flanagan and KC Bausch) Ongoing Emergence Press, Riverdale GA, 2012

• A Democratic Approach to Sustainable Futures: a workbook for the study of the global problematic (TR Flanagan and KC Bausch) Ongoing Emergence Press, Riverdale GA, 2011

• Prologue, TR Flanagan in Body Wisdom: Interplay of Body and Ego (KC Bausch), Ongoing Emergence Press, Riverdale GA, 2010

• The Talking Point: Creating an Environment for Exploring Complex Meaning, (TR Flanagan and AN Christakis), Information Age Publishing, Inc., Charlotte, NC, 2010

Other Publications

• K. Weigand, Flanagan, TR, Dye, KMC, and Jones, PH. (2013). Collaborative Foresight in Long-Horizon Planning: Contrasting dialogic and rational planning traditions in R&D strategy. Technological Forecasting & Social Change (in press).

• TR Flanagan, (2012). Representation of Systems Views in the Science of Dialogic Design,. in Strategic articulation of actions to cope with the huge challenges of our world today (Reynaldo Trevino-Cisneros and Bethania Arango Hisijara), A Social Systems Approach to Global Problems 1:167-168, Institute of 21st Century Agoras • http://www.academia.edu/3386273/Strategic_Articulation_of_Actions_to_Cope_with_the_Huge_Challenges_of_our_World_Today

• KC Bausch and Flanagan, TR (2013), A Confluence of Third-Phase Science and Dialogic Design Science. Syst. Res.. doi: 10.1002/sres.2166

• J McIntyre-Mills, Made, T,, Mackenzie, Bausch, K and Flanagan, T. 2013. An Online Course in Sustainable Democracy: A Group Decision Making Process. Journal of Public Deliberation (under review Manuscript 1168)

• K Bausch, Flanagan, TR, McIntyre-Mills, J, Made, T and Mackenzie, K, 2012. Striving for Sustainable Global Democracy Through a Group Decision Making Processes: A Critical Review of an Online Course to Model Transformative Praxis. Journal of Globalization Studies 3(1).

• TR Flanagan and AN Christakis, 2011. Referential Transparency for Dialogic Design Science. International Journal of Applied Systems Science. (submitted)

• T Flanagan, J McIntyre-Mills, T Made, K Mackenzie, C Morse, G Underwood and K Bausch, 2012. A Systems Approach for Engaging Groups in Global Complexity: Capacity Building Through an Online Course, Systemic Practice and Action Research: 25(2):171-193

• K Weigand, PH Jones and TR Flanagan, 2010. Collaborative Discovery of the Structure of Concerns: Understanding and Navigating Complex Problem Systems. ISSS Abstracts.

• H Benking, AN Christakis and TR Flanagan, 2010. Coming to Our Senses: Dimensionality of socio-cultural systems in Organizing collective Wisdom. Abstract, Berlin Conference on the Human Dimensions of Global Environmental Change. Oct. 8-9, 2010.

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Tom Flanagan

External links

• Institute for 21st Century Agoras
• Flanagan page in Linkedin