xxiv a series of modelling projects... unfolded... The idea was to take a fresh view of planning and decision
making in organisations and see them as collective learning processes.
xxvi ... a widely cited paper in the academic management literature entitled 'Asset stock accumulation and
sustainability of competitive advantage'. The paper was written by INSEAD's Ingemar Dierickx and Karel Cool and appeared in
Management Science in 1989. Their argument was that the sustainability of firms' competitive advantage could be better
understood by thinking about the way firms accumulate the asset stocks that underpin their business... Sustainability
of competitive advantage would stem in part from the time it takes to accumulate or reconfigure such assets.
p.1 I have always been fascinated by models and games and particularly by model conceptualisation,
the process by which people represent and simplify situations from the real world to make sense of them. [JLJ - so
have I]
p.2 The challenge of any kind of modelling lies precisely in deciding, among myriad factors, what
to include and what to leave out... The starting point is essentially, 'what's important here'?
What do you and others have in mind when you think about the strategy and future success of [an entity]? What is the issue
under investigation and which factors need [the] most attention to address the issue? These practical questions in turn raise
a more basic philosophical question about how we conceptualise the enterprises in which we live and work. How do people...
anticipate outcomes well enough to shape... intelligent strategy and policy?
p.6 The idea of rehearsing alternative futures is fundamental to contemporary strategic modelling
and scenario development. The purpose of models and simulations is to prepare organisations and individuals for alternative
futures by bringing these futures to life so they are imagined more vividly than would otherwise be possible.
p.6 An important objective for modellers... is to find a compact 'shareable' description of how a firm,
industry or social system works... the creative and divergent thoughts that are present at a very early stage of enquiry...
must be turned to convergent thoughts that focus group attention on the essence of the situation at hand (by agreeing, through
ruthless pruning, what's really important and what can be safely ignored).
p.6 The model's enduring appeal and power to communicate lies partly in its concise yet compelling
representation of a massively complex reality.
p.42 The feedback systems thinker looks for the structure, the web of relationships and constraints
involved in operating a [system].
p.42 This notion of having in mind a structure that fits (or might fit) observed dynamics is common
in system dynamics modelling. It is known formally as a 'dynamic hypothesis', a kind of preliminary guess at the
sort of relationships likely to explain a given pattern of behaviour through time.
p.55 A powerful feature of feedback systems thinking and system dynamics is its ability to incorporate both
tangible and intangible factors.
p.56 For the systems thinker, feedback loops are the equivalent of the sketches created
by political cartoonists. They capture something important about the situation or object of interest.
p.59 Asset stock accumulation is a very important idea in system dynamics, every bit as fundamental
as feedback and in fact complementary to it. You can't have one without the other.
p.106 Step 1 is problem articulation... Step 2 is a dynamic hypothesis,
a preliminary sketch by the modeller of the main interactions and feed back loops that could explain observed or anticipated
performance. Step 3 is formulation... Step 4 is testing... Step 5 is policy formulation
and evaluation.
p.107 From a modeller's perspective, a dynamic hypothesis is a particularly important step of 'complexity
reduction' - making sense of a messy situation in the real world.
p.134 Most models start from a dynamic issue in terms of performance over time that is puzzling,
dysfunctional, unintended or maybe just difficult to foresee. The modelling process is creative and iterative. The
modeller begins with a hunch about which feedback loops are capable of generating the dynamics of interest... Feedback
loops emerge by stitching together stock accumulations, operating policies, information flows and other practical operating
constraints.
p.146 Modelling is not a cookbook procedure - it is fundamentally creative.
p.146 To what extent should models represent something tangible 'out there' in the real world as opposed
to perceptions in the minds of those who must take action in the real world?
p.151 all problematical situations contain people who are trying to act purposefully or
with intention.
p.200 Only by keeping the distinction clear [between desired and actual conditions] is it possible
to represent realistic disequilibrium pressures that drive corrective actions and contribute to dynamics.
p.285 Having described the conceptual building blocks and feedback loops of the oil producers' model we
are now ready to simulate scenarios. The key to effective scenario modelling is to unfold several alternative futures
p.374 A model is a tangible aid to imagination and learning, a transitional object to help people
make better sense of a partly understood world.
p.376 As Forrester (1975, p213) noted of social systems:
The mental image of the world around us that we carry in our heads is a model. One... has only selected
concepts and relationships which he uses to represent the real system... All our decisions are taken on the basis
of models.. The question is not to use or ignore models. The question is only a choice among alternative models.
