System Dynamics
The European Master programme in System Dynamics is specifically designed for students who are interested in learning how to initiate strategic change in organizations.
With the growing interconnectedness of society and increasing turbulence, organisations in the public and private sectors are continuously confronted with the need for improvement in strategy development, policy design and decision making in and across complex, dynamic domains. History is full of examples where decision makers did not succeed in designing such effective policies: overoptimistic leaders have started wars they were bound to loose, learning-by-doing policies have not been sufficient to prevent overutilisation and depletion of renewable resources, very successful start-up-firms have over-expanded and gone bankrupt, governments have tried in vain to reduce health care costs, and so on.
A common denominator here is a lack of understanding of the systems people control: they ignore or misperceive the nature of stocks and flows, feedback loops, delays, and non-linearities. Many such dynamic systems are not yet properly understood, confer the recent financial crisis. Model based policy analysis and design (with the help of System Dynamics) has long been recognised as a way to help people make better decisions when confronted with the complexity of dynamic systems.
