Books
From early frameworks for dealing with complex problems to today’s work with Serious Gaming and AI.
The New Art of Problem Solving
The book explores how AI becomes a “co-thinker” in complexity, and what this means for human judgment, creativity, and leadership. Reflective in tone, this book is for readers who like to immerse themselves in perspectives before acting.
Co-authored with AI application expert Pieter ter Doest, it connects decades of practice to a forward-looking conversation: not quick fixes, but deeper ways of thinking about complexity, with the freedom to choose how (or if) to bring these ideas into your own context.
Worldwide available here
Solving the Right Problem
This book combines a problem-solving framework with Serious Gaming and Generative AI to help teams avoid “solution rush,” explore perspectives, and design sustainable decisions.
Practical and hands-on, this book is written as a workbook to use directly in your own projects. Just like my 2020 publication, it offers worksheets, techniques and structures you can write in, adapt, and reuse, so that each project becomes its own record of learning and decision-making.
Expected Summer 2026
These two books, The New Art of Problem Solving and Solving the Right Problem, together form the most up-to-date entry point into our current work on problem solving. You can find more about the books, the approach, and the accompanying materials on the dedicated page for these books.
Dealing with Complex System Problems (2020)
This book isn’t just for reading, it’s designed as a workbook you can write in, draw on, and adapt to your own cases. Each project becomes a record in itself: many consultants even bought a new copy for every project they carried out, keeping all their insights together in one place.
Practical and hands-on, it offers tools and thinking skills for decision-making in complex environments. Many of the concepts are now expanded in my work with play and AI, but this book still provides a solid and usable starting point.
Worldwide available here
Solving Complex Problems (2010, updated 2014)
An introduction to structured techniques for professional group decision-making in highly complex situations. Covers rational analysis, creative idea generation, and comparing options under uncertainty.
Co-authored with Pauline de Heer, this book, practical in approach, was never written for academia’s sake but for people who wanted methods they could actually use. The techniques remain the backbone of my facilitation work, now enriched with Serious Gaming and AI.
Available via Publisher here
Inleiding Technische Bestuurskunde (2008, Dutch)
A foundational Dutch text on systematically solving multi-actor problems. Offers a framework that is still taught and applied today.
Though written in Dutch, its influence underpins my later English-language publications and my applied work with organizations.