Sociomeeting: Heterogeneous Dynamics

Many real world complex systems are not homogeneous. Some elements change in time faster than others, with slower elements, usually the most relevant, providing robustness and faster ones being adaptive. We take a small number of homogeneous dynamical models and explore their heterogeneous versions, finding evidence that heterogeneity broadens the region where criticality is found. Thus, parameter fine-tuning is not necessary to reach a phase transition and obtain the benefits of criticality.  Also, we characterize three types of heterogeneity according to its structure, temporal dynamics, and functional update rules.