REPLY The Death of System Dynamics? (SD6205)

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Posted by  Bill Braun <bbraun at hlthsys.com>

Richard Stevenson wants to know who is in charge of SD.

I ask, who is in charge of any discipline? Broadly stated, I would say 
that the thought leaders are in charge.

I interpret Richard's comments to suggest that original visions are 
immutable. I too read and reread Dr. Forrester's seminal works, and after 
numerous readings, still come away inspired and rejuvenated. Does that 
mean there is nothing after his thinking?

If SD is to be measured by its business orientation, I fear whatever 
toehold it has will shrink. At ISDC 2005 I attended the session on SD 
in education with Peter Senge and friends, and sat behind Dr. Forrester, 
who, from his comments, did not have a lot of business on his mind at the 
time. Is there a connection between education and business? Of course. 
That said, he seemed to be keenly interested in how we educate, which 
taken at face value, is not business.

I appreciate Richard's sentiment, but I am not sure he is on target with 
his narrow metric of conferee participants. Nor am I convinced that the 
"right to roam" is the death knell of SD. I paged through past issues of 
the SDR and the scholarship and the concrete reality of a cross section of 
papers seemed pretty earth-bound to me.

I did connect with Richard's metaphor of English and Esperanto; the vast 
majority of managers are for the most part incurious and largely 
undereducated (including those with MBAs) and matching the vocabulary to 
the audience may turn out to be a high leverage shift.

Bill Braun
Posted by  Bill Braun <bbraun at hlthsys.com>
posting date  Tue, 23 Jan 2007 07:08:48 -0500