REPLY Society Strategy Development (SD6936)

[SDMAIL Doug Samuelson]

Posted by  Doug Samuelson <samuelsondoug at yahoo.com>

Posted by  Brian Crowe <brian_crowe at i-worx.com>
>I am focused on problem solving in my business...

I think you could substitute the name of almost any technical method for "System 
Dynamics" in this comment, and it would still be spot on.  Certainly the same 
considerations apply to operations research, the field I know best.  Solving 
the reduced-form math / OR / stat / simulation / SD / whatever problem is of
 no value whatsoever until the solution is translated back into the language 
 in which the question was asked, complete with detailed guidance about 
 implementation.  

Older fields, such as statistics, quality control, economics, and -- to a 
lesser extent, in my opinion -- OR, have scattered bits of wisdom about how to 
embed the technical work into successful problem-solving efforts.  I think the 
quality management literature is perhaps the best place to start -- Juran, 
Crosby, Feigenbaum and Godfrey come to mind offhand.  There might be a good 
opportunity here for both improvement of practice and contributions to the 
academic literature: how can we identify best practices from other fields and 
apply them to SD projects.

-- DS
Posted by  Doug Samuelson <samuelsondoug at yahoo.com>
posting date  Thu, 17 Apr 2008 08:11:06 -0700 (PDT)