Systemness is consistent with the corporate enterprise model of governance.

At that period, professionals began to use systemness to describe their combination of IT assets and services to provide efficient healthcare.

Systemness is a student-centered network that fosters collegiality, diversity, and economic growth for the greater New York community.

Systemness should be guided by the following five principles which, in part, owe themselves to Collins and Hanson (2011):

The work here was done together, and we hope this assists SUNY in its Systemness.

Risk-Taking - There is strength is Systemness.

Zimpher advocated the use of systemness to begin overhauling SUNY in her January 9, 2012 State of the University address.

Zimpher noted systemness as "the coordination of multiple components that, when working together, create a network of activity that is more powerful than any action of individual parts on their own."

The Kaiser Permanente Institute names seven characteristics of systemness in healthcare: Governance, strong physician leadership, organizational culture, clear & shared aims, accountability & transparency, patient-centeredness and teams.

The author states that systemness is an idea to promote "collaboration across campuses to coordinate program offerings and services, striving for common goals, and working together to count student successes as mutually beneficial."

Return on Luck - Another guiding principle of Systemness is being positioned to take advantage of our collective assets as a system and being prepared to respond to circumstances beyond our control.

The online publication Inside Higher Ed published an opinion piece by a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison on October 4, 2012 which noted the expanded usage of systemness and its application to higher education.

Systemness is the state, quality, or condition of a complex system, that is, of a set of interconnected elements that behave as, or appear to be, a whole, exhibiting behavior distinct from the behavior of the parts.

Similarly, the Governance Institute of California in 2005 explored systemness in healthcare in 'Pursuing Systemness: The Evolution of Large Health Systems':

The term was the centerpoint on August 20, 2007 at The Kaiser Permanente Institute for Health Policy's roundtable on "Improving Health Care 'Systemness': A Look at the Evidence and Policy Implications."

On February 1, 2012, the term was used by Zimpher as she spoke before New York State Senate and Assembly Committees about the 2012-13 Executive Budget Proposal to describe SUNY's systemness to "make the biggest possible impact for all New Yorkers."