Bonjour!

Bienvenue à la seizième conférence de Dynamiques des Systèmes. Je voudrais bien continuer cette présentation en Français, mais malheureusement, il y a vingt huit ans que je n’ai pas parlé ou écrit en Français sérieusement.

For those whose French may not be as great as mine, I just said "good morning" in French! (Well, I actually said "welcome to the sixteenth System Dynamics conference" and added that I would love to continue this talk in French, but unfortunately, it has been twenty-eight years since I last talked or wrote in French in any serious context).

Good morning and "it is great to be seeing you again" to many of you and "nice to be meeting you" to many others... About a year ago, far away in Istanbul, in my opening remarks as the chair of the 15th ISDC, I said that it was a great honor for me to be hosting the conference in my home country. And this time I am here to deliver the President’s address - another great honor and privilege. (I am afraid this is spoiling me!)

Today, I will first give you some good news and then talk about some challenges.

First, the good news:
The Society membership has been growing steadily. (About 50% increase in the last 5 years, now in the high 600’s).
The number of countries with members has increased to a record 47.
There are now four international chapters and more are in the creation process.
The professional administration of the Society is in full charge, involved in:
- Assisting conference organization
- Seeking sponsorship
- Managing sales (old journal    issues/proceedings and Beer Game)
- General information services to members (especially electronically)
Several electronic discussion lists are active, thanks to Bob Eberlein.
Internet/Web presence is strong, thanks to Mike Radzicki (the Society Secretary) of Worcester Polytechnic and Roberta Spencer and company at Albany.
Speaking of Worcester, we now have the first full undergraduate degree in System Dynamics at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. (Many thanks to Khalid Saeed, Mike Radzicki and others involved in it).

So, things are in good shape in general. What about the "challenges?" I will now spend some time on a few conceptual and technical challenges - in my view - that we system dynamicists must deal with in the near future.

1- The first challenge has to do withchoosing a good problem.
Many years ago when I was an undergraduate student, I recall my professors advising: "A good industrial engineer (modeler) is the one that examines a given problem and chooses the right modeling technique/tool from his/her toolbox; do not walk around with a screwdriver, looking for a screw that would fit your tool! Adjust yourself to the problem." Over the years, I gradually reached the conclusion that this advice was wrong at a very fundamental level (although there is partial truth to it at some technical/micro level).

I have gradually learned that good modeling primarily and precisely starts with looking around and finding a "good" problem that would fit our screwdriver (or narrow set of screwdrivers).  I
submit that much care must be exercised in "choosing the problem," more specifically in identifying, interpreting, shaping and even "defining" it. If a good dynamic feedback problem is chosen, then the system dynamics study is much more likely to be a success. On the other hand, an ill-chosen problem  (a static or open-loop problem) can be much better handled by other methodologies and a system dynamics study would most likely be ineffective. (The same general rule should naturally be applied to any other modeling discipline.) I see this as a challenge, because I have not only seen many "ill-chosen" system dynamics studies over the years, but also have personally been involved in a couple of such projects.

I thus challenge myself and all system dynamicists to be aware of this crucial necessary factor for a successful project and spend effort to find good problems (similar to the "well-posed problem" of the mathematician). The world has more than enough problems - both in quantity and in diversity. Let us look around for those screws and bolts and nuts that system dynamics, our unique tool, would best fit.

2 - The next challenge is about therole of models in analysis and design.
In recent years, we have been witnessing comparative evaluations of system dynamics and systems thinking. Simultaneously, we have been debating about a similar dichotomy between "qualitative" and "quantitative" (formal-model-based) approaches. I submit that a productive way of restating - and perhaps resolving - these dichotomies is to take a look at the relationship between "system dynamics model" and "system dynamicist." The ultimate set of insights offered by a system dynamicist about a dynamic feedback problem is in general much larger than the results directly "produced" by the model.
The analyst bases her conclusions on a much richer database of dynamic intuition, acquired as a result of years of experience with many other models. Through the exercise of building and analyzing many models, the analyst acquires a rich set of dynamic analysis skills. This is not to undermine the importance of models; it is just that the "last" model can not by itself do all the job. That is probably why to most critics a given model typically looks "unrealistic" (i.e. lacking many intangible factors that they believe are important in addressing the problem).

This type of criticism may tempt the modeler to make the model larger, more and more detailed. But this path often makes the situation worse rather than resolving it: new additions to the model will still not satisfy the critic and the model now becomes large, complicated and unrealistic! The crucial factor ignored in this debate is the fact that the ultimate analysis and results are helped by  many mental models that the analyst has in her repertoire. So, what is the way out of this dilemma?

I believe the key is to make systematic use of our mental models and dynamic insights and go through extensive sessions of model simplification so as to end up with a final model that is as compact as possible, yet able to explain the fundamental dynamics. Systems thinking and qualitative system dynamics can play an important role in this process and it is in this sense that they can complement system dynamics modeling projects. Toward the completion of a study, the analyst acquires a dynamic understanding of the problem that s/he did not have in the early phases. I therefore submit that there must be an additional, final formal step in system dynamics modeling: model simplification. The study cycle must be completed by the analyst crafting a much simpler, yet fundamental version of her "working" model.  This means substantial time and effort, but I believe it is well worth it. The final model would be much more likely to be put in use, published and disseminated.

3- This takes me to the third challenge:Low record of scientific publications.
I have historic yearly data on system dynamics publications (in SYSTEM DYNAMICS REVIEW and elsewhere). The general behavior consists of a boom until the late 1970’s, a sharp decline between ‘80-’85, a second (smaller) boom after ’85 and finally another decline after 1990. There are of course many causes and mechanisms behind this undesirable behavior, beyond the scope of this talk. I just want to give two brief messages: First, we should simply recognize that there is a problem and start working on it, both as a Society and as individuals. Second, I believe that one important cause of the low publication record is the fact that many of us do applied work, involving large-scale detailed models. Such models are very difficult to publish in a scientific format. They must first be drastically simplified and reduced in size and detail. Many of us may be unwilling to go through this time-consuming step. (I admit not to have a very good record myself). But this extra step is definitely worth the effort, as I mentioned above in item 2.

Model simplification is not only needed for publication, but  must actually be seen as an integral part of the project itself. The publication challenge is more important for the academicians (for promotion), but let us keep in mind that publishing, disseminating our good work is also crucial for the recognition of our field in general.

4- Finally, the last challenge isimproving our communication links.
I believe that we face several communication challenges, within the field and between us and other fields:

We now have significant system dynamics activity in many different geographical regions - in many countries on almost all continents. The field started at MIT and for many years an overwhelming portion of system dynamics activity occurred at MIT and in the northeastern USA. Although MIT is still the center of activity, many other locations around the world have recently become increasingly more active. The trend is expected to continue and it is of course a positive development for the field, provided that the growth is healthy. In this process of growth and geographical dispersion, there are several communication risks: there may be communication delays can be large relative to the speed of the growth; there may be linguistic (in the technical sense) communication problems, due to different centers adopting different technical "jargon"; and there may be cultural communication differences. In short, we will increasingly face the challenge of setting up and managing effective communication channels, the most important one being proper use of electronic communication.

Another similar intra-field communication challenge has to do with the four constituencies of system dynamics that our Past President George Richardson talked about in his ’97 speech in Istanbul: Researchers, educators, consultants and practitioners. (I urge the Society members to read Richardson’s talk especially if they were not at the Istanbul conference.) Although these four constituencies do share the general mission of the System Dynamics Society, each has different specific goals, needs, problems and even jargon. Bringing these different constituencies together at conferences and other meetings is necessary but not sufficient. The challenge is to create a synergetic interaction environment so that both the Society and each individual constituency benefit from it.

There is also a communication weakness between our Society and other sister disciplines (such as the Society for Computer Simulation, INFORMS and several "systems" societies). We need to be more actively involved at other conferences and seminars, announce our activities more aggressively in their publications (such as SIMULATION and OR/MS TODAY) and pursue more inter-disciplinary projects. We must also try to publish in a wider variety of journals (not instead of  but in addition to  SYSTEM DYNAMICS REVIEW, of course).

And finally, a non-scientific observation of mine (shared by many friends): It  seems that in many publications/presentations dealing with system dynamics,  authors avoid using the term "system dynamics." Instead, they use various terms like "STELLA" or "DYNAMO" model, "Simulation" model, "Forrester" approach, "Systems Thinking," etc. I am sure there are many different reasons why this is the case: practical convenience or other concerns, scientific/technical reasons, and some social, historical and psychological factors. From a purely technical perspective, system dynamics means "dynamics of systems" and it is a reasonable name for our Society in general. On the other hand, it seems like other specific usages like "system dynamics model" or "system dynamics approach" are awkward, non-descriptive, even linguistically incorrect. (For those interested, I have a small library of research on the various uses, misuses and
"non-use" of "system dynamics.")  But whatever the reason, I believe that the current situation constitutes an unnecessary communication handicap for the Society. In particular, it is totally unacceptable for our models and methodology to be reduced to software names. I suggest that we should adopt a standard name for our models and methodology and urge all members to  use it. Examples of such terms descriptive of our methodology could be: "systemic feedback" model (method, approach) or "systemic dynamic feedback" model... Alternatively, we could adopt an acronym (like SDFS, standing for "systemic dynamic feedback simulation") - although I am personally not a great fan of acronyms. The name does not have to be perfect; the critical issue is that it be accepted and consistently used by all members of the Society, as well as non-members involved in system dynamics.

In closing, I believe that the System Dynamics Society is in good shape, as you heard in the "good news" part of my talk. And I believe it would be in much better shape if we can tackle these challenges in the near future. I know that these are not easy tasks; they present many difficult sub-problems. But as the French philosopher Alain said: "tout est complex dans la nature" (all is complex in nature). And strangely enough, we system dynamicists like this complexity. It is this "masochistic" character that makes us truly unique!

That is all I have to say. Thank you for your time and have a great conference!
 

Yaman Barlas
Quebec City,
July 1998

NOTE: Item 4 above was skipped in the actual talk due to lack of time.

President's Newsletter
Volume 11 - December 1998

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