When endeavoring to develop an understanding of the nature of something it is generally useful to create a model of some type to aid in surfacing that understanding.

The structure responsible for rabbit population growth.

The interaction of a population of Moose and Wolves.

This model depicts the interactions of Aesop's Fable "The Boy Who Cried Wolf."

All the following have a common characteristic.

While these pictures represent very different things there is a common essence.

There are about fifteen known archetypes with an interesting set of relationships among them.

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See also...

* Success in Acquisitions: Using Archetypes to Beat the Odds by Novak & Levine

* Systems Thinking Metaphors for Illuminating Fundamental Policy Dilemmas by Saeed

The interaction of a population of Moose and Wolves.

The interaction of a population of Moose and Wolves.

The structure responsible for rabbit population growth.

Introduce the concept of modeling and simulation.

If we pay close attention to our actions and the typical outcomes of those actions it would be evident that there are frequently occurring patterns that develop. And there is a relation between the patterns.

All you wanted to do was put a bird feeder in your yard to attract birds and make for a more pleasant morning. And...

There are three types of models most commonly used.

Introduce the concept of modeling and simulation.

Introduce the concept of modeling and simulation.

The model construction process is actually a balancing loop which endeavors to employ an abstract version of real events to form a model which produces conclusions and behavior which mimic the real events.

Consider the following "Sustaining the Forest" model intended to provide another example of how unexpected the behavior of a web of extended interactions can be.

While these pictures represent very different things there is a common essence.

While these pictures represent very different things there is a common essence.

The interaction of a population of Moose and Wolves.

This model is derived from the paper "Nobody Ever Gets Credit for Fixing Problems that Never Happened: Creating and Sustaining Process Improvement" by Nelson P. Repenning and John D Sterman. See Insight 752 for a causal loop version of this model.

The interaction of a population of Moose and Wolves.