Strategic Modelling and Business Dynamics: A Feedback Systems Approach

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 ...