This article was aimed at analysing the dynamics of the Universidad Nacional de Colombia's Faculty of Engineering' research groups in Bogotá from three different perspectives. The first was related to the research groups' academic and scientific productivity according to COLCIENCIAS' measurement model which ranks groups into five categories: A1, A, B, C and D. The second analysed the groups as management and knowledge generationunits, aiming to improve institutional/organisational development and learning. The third perspective adopted complexity theory's point of view which is related to the diversity of heterogeneous elements which are inseparably associated with a specific situation in which the whole consists of the interacting parts which, in turn, are in contact with the whole and with their environment.