Using ANP to design a living system like balanced operating model for intangible services

There is no need to present another ANP-based approach for weighting criteria within decision making contexts. Academic literature in disciplines like economics, engineering, political sciences, statistics or mathematics testify to the broadness of topics, situations and cultures where the method's value has been proven. From supply planning or road mapping to monitoring, from crisis management or banking crime to rural water supply, decision makers -both in governments or firms- have implemented this method on the five continents. However, the method has been used less in areas beyond decision making. For example, in the field of innovation or organisational design, it can be expected that ANP facilitates the formulation of a suitable dynamic to combine the complex links of experts representations of the system under study. We advance the hypothesis that the ANP method's friendliness to rough data, and ability to combine tangible and intangible information can be useful for providing the relevant interactions for living systems like modelling which is at the centre of the cross disciplinary creativity needed to design innovative and balanced operating models. In this context "operating models" shall be understood as the descriptions of how organizations operate across processes, people and technology in order to accomplish their functions.