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Chapter 13
A New Perspective for Risk Management:
AStudyoftheDesignofGenericTechnology
with a Matroid Model in C-K Theory
Pascal Le Masson, Benoit Weil, and Olga Kokshagina
Abstract Risk management today has its main roots in decision theory paradigm
(Friedman and Savage, J Polit Econ 56:279-304, 1948). It consists in making the
optimal choice between given possible decisions and probable states of nature.
In this paper we extend this model to include a design capacity to deal with risk
situations.
A design perspective leads to add a new action possibility in the model: to design
a new alternative to deal with the probable states of nature. The new alternative
design might also “create” new risks, so that a design perspective leads also to
model the emergence of new risks as an exogenous “design process”. Hence a
design perspective raises two issues: can we design an alternative that would lower
the risk? Does this new alternative create new risks?
We show (1) that minimizing known risks consists in designing an alternative
whose success is independent from all the known risks—this alternative can be
considered as a generic technology. We show (2) that the design of this generic
technology depends on the structure of the unknown, ie the structure of the space
generated by the concept of risk-free alternative. (3) We identify new strategies to
deal with risks as dealing with the unknown.
Keywords Decision theory • Design theory • Evolutionary model • Generic
technology design • Independence • Matroid • Risk management • Robustness
• Structure of the unknown
Unknowledgements: The Chair of Design Theory and Methods for Innovation, French Council
for Energy.
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