From the cell, to the organ, to the organ system, to the body, to the society, all systems have these 19 things (according to James Miller's "Living Systems"): 1. **Reproducer** - making similar-to-itself bits 2. **Boundary** - holds components together and protects from the outside 3. **Ingestor** - bringing in matter/energy across the boundary 4. **Distributor** - moves energy/material around within the system 5. **Converter** - changes inputs of one form into another 6. **Producer** - makes stuff 7. **Matter-energy storage** 8. **Extruder** - outputs products/waste from the system 9. **Motor** - move the system, or parts within it 10. **Supporter** - maintaining spatial relationships between system components 11. **Input transducer** - receives signals from outside the system & converts them for use 12. **Internal transducer** - converts signals from inside the system 13. **Channel and Net** - the transducer's communications network infrastructure 14. **Decoder** - interprets signals 15. **Associator** - carries out the 1st stage of learning, associating things. 16. **Memory** - carries out the 2nd stage of learning, storing associations 17. **Decider** - receives lots of inputs, generates main system control signals 18. **Encoder** - for preparing signals outside the system 19. **Output transducer** - for actually sending signals out from the system All of these "living" system features can also be applied to a _business_, when viewed as a system. **** # More ## Source - [[Just Enough Structured Analysis]] ## Related - [[What is a System]]