How to Use This Book

To get the most out of Strategic Modelling and Business Dynamics it is important to develop a good intuitive feel for 'dynamics' – how and why things change through time. Personal experience of simulated dynamics is a good way to learn. So the book comes with a CD. On the CD are models and gaming simulators that allow readers to run simulations for themselves and to reproduce the time charts and dynamics described in the text. The models come to life in a way that is impossible to re-create with words alone. It is easy for readers to spot opportunities for 'interactive learning'. A CD icon is printed in the page margin and the text explains how to run the simulator. Examples include drug-related crime, the collapse of fisheries, perverse hotel showers, manufacturing cycles, market growth, competitive dynamics, hospital performance and volatility in global oil.

There are also PowerPoint slides to accompany the book which are available on the instructors' website (www.wileyeurope.com/college/morecroft). There are lectures and workshops which are organised in four themed folders chosen to match the content and sequence of the book. The first theme is 'Feedback Systems Thinking and Puzzling Dynamics' and spans Chapters 1, 2 and 3. The second theme is 'Conceptualisation and Cyclical Dynamics' and spans Chapters 4 and 5. The third theme is 'Growth, Stagnation and Decline' and covers Chapters 6 and 7. The final theme is 'Applications, Model Validity and Learning' and covers Chapter 8, Chapters 9 and 10. The lectures can be delivered in about three hours each or can be subdivided to fit shorter time periods. The workshops are intended to last for an hour or more. They can be supplemented with group work on assignments which are also included in the themed folders.

There are many ways to use the book, CD models and website slides in university and management education, some of which are outlined below. No doubt instructors will adapt and tailor the materials to suit their own needs, but the following comments may trigger some useful thoughts.

MBA and Modular/Executive MBA

The book is derived from an MBA elective of the same name (Strategic Modelling and Business Dynamics SMBD) that runs at London Business School. It therefore has a track record in graduate management education. To run a similar elective course at another business school I recommend starting with the well-known 'Beer Distribution Game' in the opening session and then working through a selection of book chapters complemented with workshops and assignments based on the CD models. The Beer Game is a role-playing exercise for teams of students that examines supply-chain dynamics and coordination problems in a multi-stage production-distribution chain comprising retailers, wholesalers, distributors and a factory. The game can be purchased at modest cost from the System Dynamics Society www.systemdynamics.org and is a vivid way to introduce students to modelling, representation, simulation and puzzling dynamics. On this foundation can be built lectures and workshops that introduce feedback systems thinking and modelling (Chapters 2 and 3); examine the cyclical dynamics of balancing loops (Chapters 4 and 5); and overlay the growth dynamics of reinforcing loops to study limits to growth, stagnation and decline (Chapters 6 and 7). By the end of Chapter 7 students have covered the key concepts required to conceptualise, formulate, test and interpret system dynamics models. Then instructors can select among the applications presented in Chapter 8, Chapters 9, and 10 (complemented with system dynamics materials from other sources) to create a complete course with 30 or more contact hours offered in modular or weekly format. The material is best spread-out across an academic term or semester to allow adequate time for reading, preparation and model-based assignments.

Non-Degree Executive Education

Materials from the book have also been successfully used in a popular one-week residential Executive Education programme called Systems Thinking and Strategic Modelling STSM which ran at London Business School throughout the 1990s. The purpose of this programme was rather different than a typical MBA course in strategic modelling and business dynamics. Participants were often senior managers and/or their experienced staff advisers. For these people it was important to communicate how they should use modelling and simulation for strategic development and organisational change. Mastering the skills to build models and simulators was secondary to their need for becoming informed model users, by which I mean people capable of initiating and leading strategic modelling projects in their own organisations – as many STSM participants subsequently did. So the programme was designed to emphasise the conceptual steps of model building including problem articulation and causal loop diagramming. The course also provided syndicate teams with a complete, compact and self-contained experience of the steps of a group modelling project from problem definition, to model formulation, testing and simulation. This compact experience was delivered through mini-projects, chosen by the teams themselves, and developed into small-scale models under faculty supervision.

The programme began in the same way as the MBA course, with the Beer Distribution game used as an icebreaker and an entertaining introduction to feedback systems thinking, dynamics and simulation. Participants then learned, through lectures and syndicate exercises, the core mapping and modelling concepts in Chapters 2 and 3. It may seem surprising that executives would take an interest in hotel showers and drug-related crime (the examples in Chapters 2 and 3 that illustrate causal loop diagrams, feedback structure, equation formulation and simulation), but they always did. Real-world applications were then demonstrated with lectures about serious and successful modelling projects such as the Oil Producers' model in Chapter 8 or the Soap Industry simulator in Chapter 10. In addition guest speakers from business or the public sector, sometimes past-participants of STSM, were invited to talk about their experiences with modelling. Participants also spent half a day or more using a strategy simulator such as the People Express Management Flight simulator (referred to in Chapter 6) or the Beefeater Restaurants Microworld, available from www.strategydynamics.com. Working in small teams of three or four, participants discuss and agree a collective strategy for their assigned company and then implement the strategy in the corresponding simulator. Invariably, when dealing with dynamically complex situations, the best laid plans go astray and teams' experiences provide much valuable material for a debriefing on the pitfalls of strategy making. The final two days of the programme are spent on the team mini-projects mentioned above.

Undergraduate and Specialist Masters Courses

I am confident that the content of this book works for MBA and Executive Education. My expectation is that it will also prove suitable for undergraduate and specialist masters courses in modelling and simulation. Obviously undergraduates lack the business experience of typical MBAs. They will therefore find it harder to make sense of the coordination problems that routinely crop-up in organisations and contribute to puzzling dynamics, chronic underperformance and failures of strategy. Here the book's CD models perform a vital function. They bridge the experience gap by enabling younger readers to simulate puzzling dynamics and to experience coordination problems for themselves.

Otherwise the sequencing of materials can be much the same as for an MBA course, with perhaps more emphasis given to non-business examples and cases. For example, it is possible to devote an opening session to the fisheries gaming simulator in Chapter 1 as a replacement for the Beer Distribution Game. Alternatively in order to retain, at the start of the course, a vivid role-playing exercise and social 'icebreaker' then simply replace the Beer Game with the Fish Banks simulator. Like the Beer Game, Fish Banks is available at modest cost from a not-for-profit organisation, this time the Sustainability Institute, Hartland, VT, USA, whose web address is www.sustainer.org/toolsresources/games.html. The game debrief can be supplemented with the model and materials in Chapter 1. Then after the game, instructors can cover the core modelling Chapters 2 through 5 and selectively add content from Chapters 6 though 10 to suit the audience. For example students who are not especially interested in firm-level business dynamics and strategy may prefer to spend more time on public sector applications in Chapter 9 and on the industry-level simulator of the global oil producers in Chapter 8.