REPLY Society Strategy Development (SD6960)

[SDMAIL Paul Holmström]

Posted by  Paul Holmström <ph at holmstrom.se>

My vision for the conference in 2028 is that of ordinariness, where system
dynamics has become so mainstream that sd-simulation is almost as widely
used as spreadsheets and a natural part of office packages. The tools have
been made useful and democratized, no longer the sole domain of those with
academic degrees. Systems Thinking and Dynamics have become natural choices
for solving even the just slightly messy problems. Those of us who have been
around a long time reminiscence over the days when we had to resort to
lengthy and indecipherable explanations of what we did.

Getting there started at school. Excellent material that already existed was
leveraged and made even more useable. Software was developed to cater for
the not so sophisticated modelers. Seasoned sd academics and practitioners
learned to live with the amateurism and early stages of learning amongst all
the newcomers. Actually all the old hands were active in developing and
running short courses for the neophytes at all levels of schooling. One gets
the feeling that most PhD's have used some sort of systems thinking or
modeling in their thesis work, it helps to integrate qualitative and
quantitative research.

Over the course of time sd trickled ³up² to higher levels of management and
got included into the standard tool set used in most organizations. The
trickle grew as younger managers were promoted upwards and as sd more and
more became integrated into conferences and training programs ans well as
other areas of knowledge and specialization.

Part of the popularization of st/sd was promoted by a new prize handed out
at system dynamics conferences, recognizing effort and clarity in thought in
popular writing, education and the spreading of sd to ³the masses²

Of course there are still a many doing pure sd and doing their doctoral work
advancing the field as such. As sd has become mainstream and spread into
other areas and conferences, the society conferences have turned more into
sd purism, advancement of the field as such and a watering hole for those in
other fields wanting to develop their expertise.

Best regards
Paul Holmstrom
Posted by  Paul Holmström <ph at holmstrom.se>
posting date  Tue, 22 Apr 2008 14:41:05 +0200