Rating: 
Summary: Brain Bending!
Review: 5 stars is not enough!I read an awful lot and most of the books I come across have about 20% of pages that are useful or informative to me if that. The rest tend to be filler. Not this one!! On virtually every page and paragraph in this book I found a gem! This is one of those rare books that causes your brain to contort itself into shapes and positions that you were not previously aware of. It is also the kind of book that I can see refering to and re-reading many many times. Sterman takes what can be quite a complex subject and evolves a storyline which is incredibly instructive but at the same time flows quite naturally and easily. Having said that, while overall this is a very good read, some parts can be mind-numbing and mentally exhausting. I found myself on some occasions needing to rest and reflect after reading just a few pages. It has taken me months to get through this book with appropriate periods of rest and reflection between readings to let the ideas sink in. (That is in great contrast to most text books which I am usually able to get through in a weekend or 2 without great strain.) While parts of this book have been hard work to get through (due to mental overload at times, not due to poor wriiting), it has been incredibly worthwhile and instructive. This book has given me some invaluable insights and tools which I have applied professionally to great advantage; not the least of which is competitive advantage. A tour de force!
Rating:
Summary: Brain Bending!
Review: 5 stars is not enough! I read an awful lot and most of the books I come across have about 20% of pages that are useful or informative to me if that. The rest tend to be filler. Not this one!! On virtually every page and paragraph in this book I found a gem! This is one of those rare books that causes your brain to contort itself into shapes and positions that you were not previously aware of. It is also the kind of book that I can see refering to and re-reading many many times. Sterman takes what can be quite a complex subject and evolves a storyline which is incredibly instructive but at the same time flows quite naturally and easily. Having said that, while overall this is a very good read, some parts can be mind-numbing and mentally exhausting. I found myself on some occasions needing to rest and reflect after reading just a few pages. It has taken me months to get through this book with appropriate periods of rest and reflection between readings to let the ideas sink in. (That is in great contrast to most text books which I am usually able to get through in a weekend or 2 without great strain.) While parts of this book have been hard work to get through (due to mental overload at times, not due to poor wriiting), it has been incredibly worthwhile and instructive. This book has given me some invaluable insights and tools which I have applied professionally to great advantage; not the least of which is competitive advantage. A tour de force!
Rating:
Summary: Wonderful
Review: Dr. Sterman's book brings SD into the 21st century. It is the required text for an SD course taught over the internet at MIT. I keep recommending it to SD practitioners and managers to get a wonderful insight into SD, both semantic and syntactic. In particular, the examples of SD studies have truly helped the un-initiated get a feel for the power of SD. In addition the balance and presentation are superb, the book is not evangalism.
Rating:
Summary: The next ten years
Review: Go ahead; get this book and be happy. If you're new to system dynamics, tell your family and friends that for the next ten years you'll be quoting endlessly from Sterman's insights. If you're deeply experienced in system dynmaics, better prepare them for at least the next twenty years. John captures the essential knowledge generated in the field and writes it in ways that will appeal to most everyone. Need a jump start to formulate a sticky set of circumstances? It's in Business Dynamics. But if you're like me, you'll find yourself reading on and on even after you got your answer. This book is as brilliant as his popular lectures at MIT. It is the best single book on system dynamics available.
Rating:
Summary: Fantastic book to explain the hidden fabric of business
Review: I would like to congratulate John for an outstanding achievement. I think he has captured everything that is interesting, relevant as well as the necessary theory to apply System Dynamics in a wide range of areas. I think the CD attachment is a great idea and the challenges are very challenging! The book is equally useful to students, consultants and academics and captures the essence of all the previous SD literature that I have read so far. I will take great pleasure in reading the book in detail and recommending it to others.
Rating: 
Summary: Essential if you lead strategy formation exercises
Review: John Sterman has written a superb book that masks the underlying calculus and reveals the capability of causal loop based situation analysis. The examples in the book are absolutely mind-boggling in scale and brilliance with which they are written. The wide applicability of system dynamics is revealed though the large problem spectrum covered in all the chapters of the book. Without needing to run through the software enclosed in the book, one can easily perceive the dependant causation of a specific problem by following the simple rules expained early on in the book for drawing reinforcing and balancing conditions that drive the causes leading to a specific problem being addressed. By focusing on the software (which is enclosed on the CD ROM) to develop a problem solving approach, one has to work hard to create a balanced problem and this is not easily done by merely reading the book. I am considering further training in this aspect to master the topic by taking some more ExecEd courses that John Sterman teaches at MIT Sloan along with Jay Forrester and Peter Senge or even taking the eight week remote learning course offered toward credit at the System Dynamics program at Sloan. I deal with complex IT architectures in my work on a daily basis involving financial, technical and business driven dependencies for Fortune 1000 firms. I use causal looping as taught by John and others at MIT Sloan to understand the path to cut through the complexity and reach an action plan that I can recommend to my clients. The book has helped me tremendously in my work in the last few months that I have been reading it on airplane trips between my office and customer offices. For a busy consultant, this is a tremendously useful way to spend flight time. I would give it 5 stars for the content except that the book is not available in e-Book format, forcing me to carry it with me in my laptop bag on flights(its a heavy tome at 900 + pages) and the software on the CD-ROM is not updated to the most current version one can download from the Vensim website nor can it be used for commercial purposes.
Rating:
Summary: The Best Book of System Dynamics
Review: Professor Sterman made a complete book of system dynamics method, system thinking to manage complexity if you are interested to create your mental model in a computer-aided model I strongly recommend this comprehensive book on modelling & simulation of complex problems.
"Es un buen libro una buena compra".
Rating: 
Summary: Is Good, but not Very Good
Review: The book if fine for novice and medium users in simulation. Very pages with same example or topic, expensed, really few contents. There are not numerical methods, integration with event models or process models, cibernetic vision, complex problems, visual simulations, business data minning, control theory, business theory, etc. Therefore, if you need to know simply small business systems simulations with only equations differential modeling, this is the book for to begin.
Rating:
Summary: Is Good, but not Very Good
Review: The book if fine for novice and medium users in simulation. Very pages with same example or topic, expensed, really few contents. There are not numerical methods, integration with event models or process models, cibernetic vision, complex problems, visual simulations, business data minning, control theory, business theory, etc. Therefore, if you need to know simply small business systems simulations with only equations differential modeling, this is the book for to begin.
Rating:
Summary: Challenging Content but very readable
Review: The field of system dynamics was created in 1956 under the leadership of MIT Professor Jay W. Forrester to evaluate how alternative policies affect growth, stability, fluctuation, and changing behavior in corporations, cities, and countries. Forrester founded the System Dynamics Program in the Alfred P. Sloan School of Management at MIT. John Sterman is currently Director of the System Dynamics Group at MIT. This text is a summary of the wisdom and knowledge gathered over more than twenty years of research dedicated to the study of practical methods for systems thinking and the dynamic modeling of complex systems. It is well written, easy to understand, and worthy of serious consideration. I believe the text is destined to become a classic. It is written in a straightforward style and does not require prerequisite knowledge of higher mathematics. Indeed, in the author's words, "one of the strengths of the text is the way it presents system dynamics with a minimum of mathematical formalism. The goal is to develop the reader's intuition and conceptual understanding, without sacrificing the rigor of the scientific method." This goal is achieved well. The text opens with a succinct and well organized description of approaches to the study of complex systems. It develops a set of principles for successful use of systems dynamics and provides well-written overviews of the Modeling Process and dynamic systems. It covers the construction of causal loop diagrams and describes their application in a variety of business and engineering examples. This is one of the best texts in its field for upper division undergraduate courses and graduate programs. It will be useful to many in business, engineering, and science.
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