Forrester-style system dynamics is a bootstrapping operation.

1. The human mind finds it difficult to conceptualize the structure of a system and predict the dynamics resulting from that structure. For example, a city manager invariably finds it impossible to understand the complex dynamics of his urban system well enough to find the high leverage policy that will actually improve his city. System dynamics overcomes that difficulty in conceptualization. The analyst begins by using system dynamics techniques to make a first pass at modeling the feedback structure of the system and then uses software and a computer to study the dynamics resulting from that initial structure.
2. Once this initial bootstrapping operation is accomplished, the way is open for the human mind, with all of its natural power, depth, and subtlety, to call forth vast amounts of information about the system, because the analyst can now organize that information around the relatively simple initial structure now in place.
3. This leads to a second system dynamics model that produces a more refined and expanded model structure and produces dynamics that more closely simulate the actual dynamics of the system.
4. After a number of iterations the analyst, if he is truly interested in the system, finds his mind beginning to meditate more and more deeply on the structure's implications and meaning.
5. As a byproduct of this meditative process, further complexities and subtleties are uncovered and used to further refine and expand the developing system dynamics model.
6. This recursive process, if skillfully utilized, leads the analyst's mind progressively to subtler and subtler insights about the system and how it operates. This enables the analyst to determine the high-leverage policy that can correct or improve the system, if that is the aim.

Footnote on changing a defective system.

Arlen Wolpert

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