MBA7504 Systems Thinking and Modeling for Business and Society
3 Elective Credits
Whether you are an entrepreneur, a member of the C-suite of an established enterprise, or a manager in a business function such as strategy, marketing and sales, operations, supply-chain management, or finance, one thing is certain: you will quickly discover you are operating in a highly interconnected world. To succeed in such a world you must, of course, be proficient at applying the more traditional business and analytical skills. However, to truly thrive, you must master decision-making and problem-solving based on an understanding of how businesses are influenced by interconnections with wider systems and how these relationships might play out over time. In other words, “system dynamics.”
“Systems thinking and dynamics” is a distinctive capability for all leaders, managers, and practitioners, especially given today’s complex times. We will be acquiring the necessary discernment and discipline through repeated practice in the development of mental models, narratives, system maps, analytical models, Excel spreadsheets, and simulation software. And we will be doing so for use cases focused on the dynamics of manufacturing and service operations, global supply chains, technology diffusion, contagious spread of ideas and diseases, populations and resources, markets and business cycles, building and destruction of trust in societies, global warming and climate change, and human agency.
The learning in the course is designed to make you mindful of the bigger picture, sharpen your skills in capturing and communicating critical system interconnections, and help you be facile at conducting thought experiments and articulating scenarios. By building models of systems and simulating their behavior over time, you should be able to design better systems, improve routine operations, and be prepared when things go awry. All this should make you not just more adept in your day-to-day responsibilities but also better at solving seemingly intractable problems and making decisions with far-reaching systemic impact.
Hopefully, we will be able to accomplish this with a healthy dose of imagination, curiosity, adventure, and fun.
Prerequisites: Completed 12 credits of core requirements