4 THE McKINSEY QUARTERLY 1995 NUMBER 4In the last few years, ideas from a eld ofengineering instrumental to advances in radar,aircrat simulators, and defense systems haveincreasingly been applied to management problems.Both managers and consultants have used systemdynamics and its principles of feedback andsecondary efects to think through how a strategymight or might not work, depending on howcompetitors react, how organizational changes arereceived, and what kinds of consequences intendedand unintended emerge. Many believe that systemdynamics has helped them become skilled atinventing the future, either by sketching out causalloops on the back of an envelope, or by assemblingequations of cause and efect in a computer model.Both approaches work.Adapted from a speech given in 1989 by the inventorof system dynamics, Jay Forrester, the followingarticle is both a short history and a helpful primer.Forrester describes how the ideas he used to uncoverthe real causes of cyclicality in industry could beadopted to explain why low-cost housing has failedto renew inner-city neighborhoods. At the end of thearticle, a postscript sums up developments that havetaken place in system dynamics in the past six years.Many managers who went to business school ty oreven ten years ago suspected that much of what wasbeing taught about strategy and organization wasessentially static in its perspective: the world stoodstill while we analyzed and xed it. It is hardlysurprising that these managers, having had theirsuspicions conrmed by their experience in complex,dynamic markets, are now quick to see the relevanceof the ideas of Jay Forrester and his colleagues.LEARNING AND RENEWALJay Forrester is the founder of system dynamics,Germeshausen Professor, Emeritus at the Sloan School of Management, and the author of a number of booksincluding Industrial Dynamics, Urban Dynamics, and WorldDynamics. ![]() DOWNLOAD BIBLIOTECH bibliotech pdf Overview of Systems Thinking Daniel Aronson ystems thinking has its foundation in the field of system dynamics, founded in 1956 by MIT professor Jay Forrester. This article is adapted from a talk he gave at an international meeting of the System Dynamics Society.Copyright ' 1990 Jay W. All rights reserved.Jay W. ForresterTHE McKINSEY QUARTERLY 1995 NUMBER 4 5The beginning ofsystem dynamicsBRIAN SMALETWO THREADS RUN THROUGH THE STORY of how I came to develop theeld of system dynamics. First, everything I have ever done hasconverged on system dynamics. Second, at many critical moments,when opportunity knocked, I was willing to walk through the open door towhat was on the other side.Early daysI grew up on a cattle ranch in Nebraska in the middle of the United States.A ranch is a crossroads of economic forces: supply and demand, changingprices and costs, the pressures of agriculture. ![]() In such a setting, life must bepractical; one works to get results. While I was at high school, I built a wind-driven electric plant that provided our rst electricity.When I nished school, I had a scholarship to go to agricultural college, butjust before I was due to enroll, I decided it wasnt for me. Instead, I went to the engineering college at the University of Nebraska. Electricalengineering, as it turned out, was about the only academic eld with a solidcore of theoretical dynamics. And so the road to the present began.Research and applicationAter my degree, I became a research assistant at Massachusetts Instituteof Technology, where I was commandeered by Gordon S. Brown, a pioneerin feedback control systems. During World War II, we worked ondeveloping servomechanisms for the control of radar antennae and gunmounts. Again, this was research toward an extremely practical end; it ranfrom mathematical theory right through to the operating eld itself.At one stage, we had built an experimental radar control for an aircratcarrier, to direct ghter planes against enemy targets. It was meant to beredesigned for production a year or so later. The captain of the carrierLexington came to MIT and saw the experimental unit, and said, I wantthat, I mean that very one we cant afordto wait for the production models. He got it.About nine months later, the experimentalcontrol stopped working, and I volunteeredto go to Pearl Harbor to nd out why. Idiscovered the problem, but didnt have timeto x it before the ship let port, so when the executive ocer asked if Iwould like to go along and nish my job, I said yes. I had no idea what I wasletting myself in for. We were of shore during the invasion of Tarawa, andthen took a turn through the Marshall Islands, which were occupied allaround us by Japanese ghter-plane bases.THE BEGINNING OF SYSTEM DYNAMICS6 THE McKINSEY QUARTERLY 1995 NUMBER 4Life must be practical. At highschool, I built a wind-drivenelectric plant that provided our rst electricity1918Born in Nebraska193539Studied electrical engineering at the Universityof Nebraska1939Joined MIT as a research assistant; workedwith Gordon S. Custom mios installer rev 5 2.
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