Why do so many strategies fail, and so many others fail to produce lasting results? Why do many businesses suffer from periodic crises, fluctuating sales, earnings, and morale? Why do some firms grow while others stagnate? How do
once-dominant firms lose their competitive edge? And how can a firm identify and design high-leverage policies that are not thwarted by unanticipated side effects?
Accelerating economic, technological, social, and environmental change challenges managers to learn how to design and manage complex systems with multiple feedback effects, long time delays, and nonlinear responses to our decisions.
Yet learning in such environments is difficult precisely because we never confront many of the consequences of our most important decisions. Effective learning in complex systems requires methods to develop systems thinking, tools
to represent and assess dynamic complexity, and strategies managers can use throughout their organizations.
This course will give you the chance to develop these methods, tools, and strategies by combining three modes of learning about complex systems: lectures, workshops, and simulations. Our lectures will explore many topics in strategic management through the lens of system dynamics, highlighting models that explain market growth and stagnation, the diffusion of new technologies, and the nature of speculative bubbles, just to name a few. The simulations
are “management flight simulators” that put you in the pilot’s seat, and let you test out the strategies you will learn about. Simulations are excellent learning opportunities because they allow space and time to be compressed, slowed, and stopped so that you can experience the long-term side effects of your decisions, carefully explore new ideas, and develop your understanding of complex systems in a low risk environment. The class workshops will give you an opportunity to create your own system dynamics insights with the careful supervision of your professor and guidance from your peers.