CHOOSING SYSTEMS THINKING SOFTWARE


CD-ROMs

CD-ROMs are durable and easy to use, and they offer you a richly detailed learning experience. The experience draws you into vivid, multimedia worlds of sight and sound. We invite you to enter these worlds, and to test your systems thinking and organizational learning skills.

• Systems Thinking . . . Taking the Next Step (available from High Performance Systems--see below)

TEAM LEARNING SOFTWARE

FASTEAMS®
This revolutionary team performance system is built to extend the current boundaries of e-learning. Its twenty-three online tools represent the accumulated best practices of over 350 teams. Empower your teams to benchmark their performance, track projects and solve common team problems 24 hours a day, seven days a week, without the need for a facilitator. (To order, see contact information below for Options for Change.)

FASTEAMS® for Leaders
This eleven-module web-based course covers all facets of a team or project lifecycle. It provides team and project leaders with in-depth knowledge and application strategies for using the FASTEAMS® toolset. This software may be used in self-directed or instructor-led, face-to-face or distance learning formats.

Contact: Alan Slobodnik, Options for Change
Tel: 781-942-9400 * Fax: 781-944-3534
E-mail: alanslobodnik@optionsforchange.com
website: www.optionsforchange.com



BUSINESS SIMULATORS FOR MANAGEMENT TRAINING

Learning from real-world experience is often high risk and costly. Using these computer simulation games, you can develop and test business strategies, as well as evaluate plans, before implementing them. Don't let your business crash and burn-—test-fly it instead! For more information, please contact the companies listed below.


People Express Management Flight Simulator™
Take on a management role at People Express Airlines—focusing on pricing, allocation of funds for marketing, capital acquisition, hiring, and scope of service provided. Observe your results in reports, tables, and graphs to learn from the conflicting pressures of decision-making in the real world.


Boom and Bust Enterprises Management Flight Simulator™

Take the role of top management as a new product is launched. Experience issues such as coordination of pricing, marketing, and capacity acquisition with the goal of maximizing profits in a competitive environment-particularly applicable to products that experience rapid growth and saturation.
Contact: John Sterman, MIT System Dynamics Group
Tel: 617-258-5583 • Fax: 617-258-7579
Web site: http://web.mit.edu/jsterman/www
E-mail: jsterman@mit.edu
Note: People Express and Boom and Bust are also available through Microworlds—see contact information below.


The Tipping Point™

A simulation model that uses lessons from public health to make an organizational change contagious and sustainable. Users experience the complexities of change and can explore the factors that motivate people to change, and apply these systemic learnings to their own organization. Related resource: Creating Contagious Commitment: Applying the Tipping Point to Organizational Change.
Contact: Andrea Shapiro • Tel: 919-732-5369
Web site: www.4-perspective.com
E-mail: andrea@4-perspective.com



Beefeaters Restaurant Microworld™

Experience the strategic challenges of a multiple retailing business. Based on an actual business success story, this engaging simulator is a powerful tool for learning about diverse problems of managing start-up, growth, and business maturity. (To order, see contact information below for Professional Services Microworld.)


Professional Services Microworld™

Experience the strategic challenges of a professional services organization. Understand the power of the dynamic "resource-system view" in managing growth and decay of strategic resources, and see how they combine together to determine long-term performance.

Oil Producers Microworld™

Take the part of the world's independent oil producers and experiment with policies that change the future in this dynamic simulation model of the global oil industry. The microworld allows users to understand more about both scenario planning and systems thinking.

Contact: Christina Spencer, Global Strategy Dynamics Limited
Tel: +44 1844 275518 • Fax: +44 1844 275507
Web site: www.strategydynamics.com
E-mail: sales@strategydynamics.com



MODEL-BUILDING SOFTWARE

System dynamics-based model-building software empowers you to create diagrams, map interrelationships, and run policy and risk analysis through multiple simulations. We recommend four tried-and-true packages, all of them developed by highly respected simulation software firms. Contact these firms for product and ordering information.


iThink® and STELLA®
isee systems, inc.
Tel: 800-987-6758 or 603-448-4990 • Fax: 603-448-4992
Web site: www.iseesystems.com
E-mail: support@iseesystems.com


Jitia™-PA Consulting
Tel: 617-252-0242 o Fax: 617-225-2524
Web site: www.jitia.com
E-mail: jitia@paconsulting.com


Powersim® Studio Enterprise 2000™
Powersim Corporation
Tel: 703-234-3917• Fax: 703-234-3901
Web site: www.powersim.com
E-mail: powersim@powersim.com


Vensim®
Ventana Systems, Inc.
Tel: 800-836-7461 or 617-489-5249 • Fax: 617-489-5316
Web site: www.vensim.com
E-mail: vensim@vensim.com

SIMULATION BOARD GAMES FOR EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING


These board games enable your group to learn experientially about basic systems principles and system behavior. To find out more, and to order these titles, contact the companies below.

The Beer Distribution Game

Participate as a member of a production-distribution system that must meet its customers' demands, minimize excess inventory, and thus minimize total cost. Insights about management systems and about how "structure produces behavior" apply well beyond inventories.
Contact: Roberta Spencer, System Dynamics Society
Tel: 518-442-3865 • Fax: 518-442-3398
Web site: www.systemdynamics.org
E-mail: system.dynamics@albany.edu


Friday Night at the ER®

"Manage" patient flow through one of four hospital departments with goals associated with quality and cost. Learn the importance of managing across boundaries and to associate structure with behavior. No healthcare experience is necessary.
Contact: Sue Woolsey, Breakthrough Learning
Tel: 408-779-0701 • Fax: 408-779-5158
Web site: www.blearning.com
E-mail: office@blearning.com


Fish Banks, Ltd.
Become involved in an exciting simulation of the fishing industry and learn valuable lessons about teamwork, natural resource depletion, and group problem-solving.
Contact: Sabina Foote, UNH, Laboratory for Interactive Learning
Tel: 603-862-2244 • Fax: 603-862-4140
Web site: www.unh.edu/ipssr/index.html
E-mail: ipssr.games@unh.edu