It is suitable for groups of about 50 to 2000 participants. The substantive and formal openness is characteristic: participants give their own topics in the plenum and make each a work group to. Possible projects are developed in this. The results are collected at the end. An infrastructure that organized the implementation of the resulting project ideas, is important because open space can produce a wide variety of concrete measures in a short time.
Self-organization is in system theory vs. Cybernetics referred to mainly a form of system development, where the mold, formative and restrictive effects of the Elements of the are organised vital (Biology) vs. mechanistic (Physics) assume that system itself. Self-organizing systems have typically four characteristics: complexity: you are complex, if their parts through mutual, permanently changing relationships are networked with one another. The parts themselves can change at any time.
Complexity makes it difficult to describe the behavior of systems or to predict and logic, fuzzy-logic. Self-reference: self-organizing systems are self-referential and exhibit an operational unity. This means that each of the system’s behavior looks back on itself and becomes the starting point for another behavior”. Operational closed systems act not due to external environmental influences, but independently and autonomously from itself. Self reference is no contradiction to the openness of systems. Redundancy: Self-organizing systems is no principled distinction between organizing, formative or steering parts. All parts of the system represent potential designers. Autonomy: self-organizing systems are autonomous, if the relationships and interactions that define the system as a unit, be determined only by the system itself. Autonomy refers to only certain criteria parameter, as a material and energy exchange relationship with the environment persists. To speak of self-organization, following (not interdependent) criteria must be met: the evolution of an open system Active regulations in a spatial/temporal organized structure without external intervention.