A Tragedy of the Commons situation exists whenever two or more activities, each, which in order to produce results, rely on a shared limited resource. Results for these activities continue to develop as long as their use of the limited resource doesn't exceed the resource limit. Once this limit is reached the results produced by each activity are limited to the level at which the resource is replenished. As an example, consider multiple departments with an organization using IT resources, until they've exhausted IT capacity.

A Tragedy of the Commons situation exists whenever two or more activities, each, which in order to produce results, rely on a shared limited resource. Results for these activities continue to develop as long as their use of the limited resource doesn't exceed the resource limit. Once this limit is reached the results produced by each activity are limited to the level at which the resource is replenished. As an example, consider multiple departments with an organization using IT resources, until they've exhausted IT capacity.

There are limits to what one can infer from a qualitative model.

A Limits to Growth Systems Archetype consists of a Reinforcing Loop, the growth of which, after some success, is offset by the action of a Balancing Loop.

Part 1 demonstrates Picture primitives and Links to create representations of interactions. These are made visually attractive because the Picture primitives are overlayed with images.

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.

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

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.

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

This model is an extension of the System Thinking Certification course Network Magic Growing Pains segment and the Strategies for Enabling a Better Tomorrow model, which served as the blueprint for this model.

This model is intended to become part of an online learning platform which includes the with the Pathways to New Community Paradigms Blog, Pathways to New Community Paradigms Wiki and a number of other Internet based resources to explore what is termed here 'new community paradigms' which are a transformational change brought about by members of a community.

Diagram from a paper by James B. Rieley entitled "The Euro Financial Crisis: Making Sense of the Mess".

The interaction of a population of Moose and Wolves.

It's relatively well understood that you can't be all things to all people. Somewhere one has to make choices. An Attractiveness Principle Systems Archetype is essentially a Limits to Growth Systems Archetype with multiple limits, all of which can not be addressed equally.

The Home Heating System can be used to demonstrate how we get caught in dilemmas and become victims of ourselves.

The interaction of a population of Moose and Wolves.

Balancing Loop with Stock & Flow Diagram.

It's relatively well understood that you can't be all things to all people. Somewhere one has to make choices. An Attractiveness Principle Systems Archetype is essentially a Limits to Growth Systems Archetype with multiple limits, all of which can not be addressed equally.

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

Balancing Loop with Stock & Flow Diagram.

Developing a strategy for dealing with a situation begins with a description of the situation and the preferred state for today, not in some distant future, and the perceived implications of not doing anything. There is a also a video for this insight.

Diagram from a paper by James B. Rieley entitled "The Euro Financial Crisis: Making Sense of the Mess".

There are about a dozen known systems archetypes with an interesting set of relationships among them. Watch Video