Both approaches work.ДЄdapted from a speech given in 1989 by the inventor of system dynamics, Jay Forrester, the following article is both a short history and a helpful primer. Many believe that system dynamics has helped them become skilled at inventing the future, either by sketching out causal loops on the back of an envelope, or by assembling equations of cause and effect in a computer model. Both managers and consultants have used system dynamics and its principles of feedback and secondary effects to think through how a strategy might or might not work, depending on how competitors react, how organizational changes are received, and what kinds of consequences-intended and unintended-emerge. He will be sadly missed at a time when the world needs his thinking most.In the last few years, ideas from a field of engineering instrumental to advances in radar, aircraft simulators, and defense systems have increasingly been applied to management problems. I found him to be a modest and slightly shy man with a dry sense of humour and an intense passion for what he did. I remember well that the latter was on his 76th birthday. I had close contact with Jay during the establishment of the System Dynamics Society and the establishment of the System Dynamics Review and when I ran the International System Dynamics conference at Stirling University in Scotland. I gave up a very secure job and took great risk with my life, and my familyвЂ™s lives, to follow his path.

I could see immediately that the transparency of continuous feedback simulation had much more to offer. I was in a job I had resorted to having been disillusioned by Operational Research and esoteric computer models. I first read his book вЂIndustrial DynamicsвЂ™ whilst working as a Purchasing Manager in British Coal in 1975. вЂњJay made an immense contribution to the world and changed my life dramatically. Prof David C Lane, FORS, Henley Business School From the Sand Hills of Nebraska to the MIT servo- mechanism laboratory, from the Marshall Islands to the dawn of the computer age, from Industrial Dynamics to World Dynamics, from corporate boardrooms to elementary school classrooms, Jay Wright Forrester lived his entire life on the frontier.вЂќ His ideas will long continue to present the field with challenges for its future. His books richly reward reading today and we are still teasing out their subtlety and insight. ForresterвЂ™s publications continue to illuminate the field of system dynamics. вЂњIt is the continuing ability of system dynamics to offer plausible explanations for seemingly puzzling phenomena across a wide range of disciplines that is a key measure of ForresterвЂ™s contribution and that explains the attraction of system dynamics to academic researchers, school teachers, consultants, managers and policy-makers. He told us of Nebraska storms so violent and intense that the brilliance of lightning was broken only by flashes of darkness.вЂќДr John Morecroft, Senior Fellow, Management Science and Operations, London Business School He said heвЂ™d never learned to ride a bike. Jay asked us to join him on horseback but we were not skilled riders. He and his wife Susan made us feel at home during our brief stay as they shared their homestead life. HeвЂ™d grown up among homestead pioneers and he went on to become an academic pioneer an original thinker-and-doer, self-sufficient, fearless and rigorous. The contrast with his normal MIT attire (smart suit and tie) was astounding. He was wearing his cowboy hat, boots and riding gear. We arrived at the ranch, ten square miles of rolling territory, to be greeted by Jay at the farm gate. I was driving across the US with my wife Linda.

In the summer of 1977 he invited me to visit his family ranch in the Sandhills district of Nebraska. He was reserved, self-contained, clear thinking вЂ“ yet welcoming. Over the next few years Jay Forrester became a familiar presence in my life. I remember vividly arriving in Cambridge, Massachusetts under New EnglandвЂ™s crystal blue skies and searching out the headquarters of the System Dynamics Group in Building E40 across from the Sloan School. вЂњIn autumn 1975 I left England to join the doctoral program at MIT. There are many more tributes on the SDS website.

Here are personal tributes from members of the UK Chapter. We were sad to learn of the death of the founder of System Dynamics, Jay W.

Industrial dynamics jay forrester