Thinking in Systems: International BestsellerThe classic book on systems thinking—with more than half a million copies sold worldwide! "This is a fabulous book... This book opened my mind and reshaped the way I think about investing."—Forbes
"Thinking in Systems is required reading for anyone hoping to run a successful company, community, or country. Learning how to think in systems is now part of change-agent literacy. And this is the best book of its kind."—Hunter Lovins
In the years following her role as the lead author of the international bestseller, Limits to Growth—the first book to show the consequences of unchecked growth on a finite planet—Donella Meadows remained a pioneer of environmental and social analysis until her untimely death in 2001. Thinking in Systems is a concise and crucial book offering insight for problem solving on scales ranging from the personal to the global. Edited by the Sustainability Institute’s Diana Wright, this essential primer brings systems thinking out of the realm of computers and equations and into the tangible world, showing readers how to develop the systems-thinking skills that thought leaders across the globe consider critical for 21st-century life. Some of the biggest problems facing the world—war, hunger, poverty, and environmental degradation—are essentially system failures. They cannot be solved by fixing one piece in isolation from the others, because even seemingly minor details have enormous power to undermine the best efforts of too-narrow thinking. While readers will learn the conceptual tools and methods of systems thinking, the heart of the book is grander than methodology. Donella Meadows was known as much for nurturing positive outcomes as she was for delving into the science behind global dilemmas. She reminds readers to pay attention to what is important, not just what is quantifiable, to stay humble, and to stay a learner. In a world growing ever more complicated, crowded, and interdependent, Thinking in Systems helps readers avoid confusion and helplessness, the first step toward finding proactive and effective solutions. |
From inside the book
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... allows our knowledge of the wondrous world in which we live to become a little more complete. At a time when the world is more messy, more crowded, more interconnected, more interdependent, and more rapidly changing than ever before ...
... allow one part to respond to what is happening in another part. For example, as the leaves lose water on a sunny day, a drop in pressure in the water-carrying vessels allows the roots to take in more water. Conversely, if the roots ...
... allow a tree to do what it does. That lack of knowledge is not surprising. It's easier to learn about a system's elements than about its interconnections. In the university system, interconnections include the standards for admission ...
... allows us a partial reconstruction of the past. ... The development of the meanders in a river, the increasing complexity of the earth's crust... are information-storing devices in the same manner that genetic systems are.... Storing ...
... allows you to ask questions about what came before, and what might happen next. it can help you focus on the time horizon appropriate to the question or problem you are investigating. Now imagine starting again with a full tub, and ...
Contents
11 | |
35 | |
Three Why Systems Work So Well | 75 |
five System Traps and Opportunities | 111 |
Six Leverage PointsPlaces to Intervene in a System | 145 |
Seven Living in a World of Systems | 166 |
Appendix | 187 |
Notes | 204 |