The following readings are intended to provide a brief overview of systems thinking, while framing its potential, challenges, and implications. These readings are clearly not intended to be comprehensive, but merely to provide a flavor for our focus in Madison. If you have other articles, references, books, or resources to suggest, please send them along. We would love to develop a resource listing to distribute after the event.

[ download the readings packet in PDF format (~280K) ]

• Project Brief: The Cultural Dynamics Project
  [available on-line]
  Participants received a version of this brief in their original invitation. It provides an overview of the project and its goals.

• Richmond, Barry, "A Pressing Need: Improving Performance," Chapter 1 from An Introduction To Systems Thinking, High Performance Systems, Inc., 2001
  [available on-line]
  While this excerpt has an initial focus on corporate process improvement and reengineering, it offers a quick overview of the needs for systems thinking, and some of the basic principals.

• Meadows, Donella, "Dancing with Systems," Whole Earth, Winter 2001
  [available on-line]
  "Places to Intervene in a System," Whole Earth, Winter 1997
  [available on-line]
  An early student of systems thinking at MIT, Donella Meadows provided a broad perspective of the potential and pitfalls of the discipline for addressing complex social and economic systems.

more Cultural Dynamics...