Executive Education

Description
Accelerating economic, technological, social, and environmental change challenges executives and policy makers to learn at increasing rates. At the same time, the complexity of the systems in which we live are growing.

To manage effectively in a world of mushrooming complexity, business executives must become systems thinkers. They must learn to expand the boundaries of their mental models and develop modeling tools to understand how the structure of complex systems creates their behavior.

Developed at MIT more than thirty years ago by computer pioneer Jay Forrester, system dynamics modeling is a set of conceptual tools that enable us to build computer simulations of complex issues - management flight simulators. In so doing, we can experience the long-term side effects of decisions, accelerate learning, and design structures and strategies for greater success.

Business Dynamics is an intensive, hands-on introduction to system dynamics modeling with a focus on business and public policy applications. Participants learn to:

• Think systemically and dynamically
• Map the structure of complex systems and understand their dynamics
• Use state of the art software for modeling and simulation of complex systems
• Implement systems thinking and modeling in teams and organizations
• Apply lessons from a variety of successful applications

In presentations and workshops, working in teams and using personal computers, participants employ a variety of models and management flight simulators to explore:

• Growth strategy
• Supply chain design
• Service quality management
• Process improvement
• Project management and product development

Participants leave the program armed with state-of-the-art simulation software and texts so that they can transform their own organizations.

The Participants
Business Dynamics is for managers, planners, and strategists who work with management teams. The program also benefits administrators of public and not-for-profit organizations, management scientists, educators, and members of the general public interested in the technique. Recent international participants have included general and functional managers of banks, hospitals, schools, telecommunications organizations, health care, and automotive companies as well as faculty. No prior computer experience is necessary, but computers are used as an aid to understanding systems.

Faculty
Faculty Leader: John D. Sterman, Jay W. Forrester Professor of Management and director of the System Dynamics Group, specializes in systems thinking for corporate and public policy, behavioral decision theory, nonlinear dynamics, and environmental sustainability. His widely used management flight simulators allow people to experience the opportunities and challenges facing top management.

Jay W. Forrester, Germeshausen Professor Emeritus of Management, invented core memory during the first wave of modern digital computers and pioneered the field of system dynamics. His current interests are the System Dynamics National Model, a comprehensive dynamic model of the macro economy; a new management curriculum focusing on a dynamic view of the corporation and its environment, and system dynamics as a methodology to give cohesion, meaning, and motivation to pre-college students.

Nelson Repenning, Associate Professor of Management Science and Organization Studies, studies how process improvement techniques such as "Total Quality Management" and "Business Process Reengineering" can be successful in some organizations but fail in others. His case studies are the basis for models that use both system dynamics and more traditional economic and organizational methods.

Peter Senge, Senior Lecturer and Chairman of the Society for Organizational Learning, studies how firms and other organizations can develop learning capabilities in a world of increasing complexity and rapid change. A founding member of the Society for Organizational Learning, Senge has written the widely acclaimed book, The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of The Learning Organization (1990).