In a different domain. For a different kind of complex system. The intellectual move is the same: take a system whose behaviour is hard to see, build rigorous models to make that behaviour legible, and give the institutions that govern it something they can actually act on.
In 1995, Andrew Barrie and John Hibbert started as consultants helping financial institutions manage market risk. The problem they were solving: complex financial systems produce behaviours — regime switches, correlated failures, tail risks — that are invisible to the institutions responsible for governing them. Standard tools were inadequate. New models were needed.
Over sixteen years, Barrie & Hibbert built those models. Stochastic scenario generators. Regime-switching equity models. Full-yield-curve frameworks for actuarial use. Economic scenario generators used by insurers, pension funds, and asset managers across four continents. In 2011, Moody's Analytics acquired the company for $77.6M.
The parallel is not superficial. Barrie & Hibbert's core insight was that financial institutions were making consequential decisions about systems they did not understand well enough — because the models they were using were inadequate for the complexity they faced. The same is true of regional economies. The stewards of innovation ecosystems are making consequential decisions — about programmes, funding, strategy — based on activity metrics that do not capture what the system is actually doing.
"The systems that endure are not those with the most control but those with the most capacity to learn."
— Donella H. Meadows, Thinking in Systems, 2008
ClusterOS is built by Community Lab — a digital infrastructure company based in Edinburgh. Community Lab builds sovereign, federated infrastructure for ecosystem builders: the platform layer that allows networks to organise, scale, and coordinate without losing autonomy.
ClusterOS is the diagnostic intelligence layer that sits above the platform — identifying what the ecosystem is doing, why it is doing it, and where the leverage points are. The two products are architecturally distinct but intellectually continuous: both are premised on the idea that coordination should be carried by infrastructure, not by people.
Trusted by the Scottish Government, PwC, The Lens, The Melting Pot, Elevator, and innovation networks across the UK.
Built in Edinburgh. Running everywhere.
The diagnostic pipeline is live. 221 completed runs across 18 countries. If you steward a regional economy and have been told — by a strategy, a report, or a gap analysis — that you understand what it is doing, we think there is a more useful question. Get in touch.