Strategy tools, courses & learning materials for individuals, universities and business
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Free resources from Strategy Dynamics

Some items are available free of charge to all or registered site visitors, some are free for registered teachers only. Registration is free. We may request validation of your email address.

Included in our free materials are recorded presentations, articles and papers and mystrategy demonstration materials. These are available under the tabs above. Registered teachers also have access to some additional material.

Agile SD - mini-course

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This mini-course has been developed from a half-day workshop led by Kim Warren, given in July 2020 at the Bergen System Dynamics conference. (Held virtually) Whether you are new to system dynamics or an experienced modeler, see how to build working system-dynamics simulation models fast and reliably. Sign up here for free introductory access. Unlike our normal business-based resources, this short course uses a familiar public-service case.

The class uses Silico software - designed to be as easy-as-possible to use. However it is possible to follow most of the Agile method's principles while using other system dynamics software.

Enrol on our Courses site

Strategy Dynamics Briefings

A fortnightly email series on Strategy Dynamics

All registered users may subscribe to our FREE email series. Delivered every 14 days direct to your inbox these briefings are drawn from the textbook Strategic Management Dynamics and include comments from Kim Warren on the application of the approach.

To subscribe, select the SMD Briefing in my account.

I just wanted to let everyone at Strategy Dynamics know that I love receiving these e-mails. As a Graduate student pursuing my M.S. Leadership, I find Strategy Dynamics very helpful; as the Ken Blanchard College of Business at Grand Canyon University expects MSL students to thoroughly understand strategy.

Melissa Grant, B.A. Psychology, M.S. Leadership-2011.

...thank you again for your newsletter.

Your Strategy page / your strategy newsletter is one of the best on the world wide web ! You meet EXACTLY what strategy is all about (many others don't ... ).

Best regards from Germany, Uwe Hilzenbecher

If you would like to comment we would be pleased to hear from you. Use our contact form or reply to briefing emails.

Videos

Sample videos from our YouTube Channel. If you find them interesting why not YouTube
We also have a number of playlists, for example:

​The value of repeatable models (5 videos totalling 2hrs 38min)
Getting started teaching Strategy Dynamics (5 videos totalling 1hr 30min)

Webinar: Living Business Models

( Click lower bar on video to view on YouTube )
This webinar focused on why every leader and executive should understand and be able to use Living Business Models - and why every analyst and consultant should be able to build these models. It is now easier, faster and more reliable to build an LBM than it is to build spreadsheet or other models that are far less useful. (Duration 63 minutes)

Additional materials:
Information and registration

Want to learn how to build models for yourself?

Take the self-paced Business Modeling Course with Kim Warren

If you are a registered teacher our courses are available free of charge, and at discounted cost for your students

The power of Dynamic Business Models

A set of 4* videos:

Playlist: (Total 31 minutes)
  • What is Dynamic Business Modeling (8 mins)
  • Success Cases with Dynamic Business Modeling (9 min)
  • Why we need Dynamic Business Modeling (4 min)
  • Dynamic business modeling courses (10 min)

* one removed since first published

Interview with Rod Brown at Opun Ltd (8 minutes)

( Click lower bar on video to view on YouTube )

Kim Warren talks to Rod Brown, CEO of Opun.co.uk about how Living Business Models helped him test, finance and manage his business.

Making dynamic modeling mainstream (22 minutes)

( Click lower bar on video to view on YouTube )

Huge numbers of business analysts and others struggle to tackle time-based issues with spreadsheets, while it is easier, faster and cheaper to build living business models. Such models are much more useful, and far less prone to error (it is estimated that up to 90% of enterprise spreadsheets have fundamental, costly errors!). This video shows how these models are quite do-able by non-experts, with a simple early-stage business case.

Recorded live at the International System Dynamics Conference in Delft, July 2016.

Continual strategy and implementation with simulation (32 minutes)

( Click lower bar on video to view on YouTube )

Simulating business performance was once difficult, technical and costly - no longer. Following the rigorous principles outlined in Engineering the Enterprise with Living Business models and using latest software makes accurate, quantified, dynamic business models easier, faster and cheaper than spreadsheet models that are far less useful. KPIs and balanced scorecards automatically fall out of these models, and they can be used for continuous operational management as well as long-term strategy.

Keynote presentation to KPI Institute conference in KL, 2016.

Why Strategy needs 'dynamics' (10 minutes)

( Click lower bar on video to view on YouTube )

Why do I need Dynamics? There are already many strategy methods and frameworks in our courses and textbooks, but they share some important limitations that are of real, practical importance. This short video outlines some of this issues.

Selection of Materials from Past Events

Videos were recorded live and hence audio quality may vary.

Planning, Financing and Managing Early-Stage Ventures

Keynote presentation at Latin American System Dynamics Conference (CLADS), Sao Paulo, November 2016.

Looks at how a single dynamic business model can be developed through three stages for new business ventures [1] A pre-launch 'sense-checking' plan, that tests the founder's assumptions and alternatives and shows what needs to happen for the venture to work [2] A fully validated business plan model, linking tangible factors like customer growth, staffing and capacity to a full financial projection, suitable for sharing with potential investors, and [3] A live operational model to inform period-to-period management decisions and continual updates to the business plan as real-world experience builds up.


System Dynamics Business Modeling

: Workshop for managers, consultants and students

EURO2016 Operational Research Society Conference, Poznan, Poland, July 2016

System dynamics offers powerful tools for understanding how businesses work and perform over time. This workshop focused on the practices of system dynamics business modeling, providing a methodology that can be applied to companies and public organizations of any kind. In this hands-on workshop, participants experience the essential principles of system-dynamics-based modeling, and are enabled to apply them, through work on a real business case. They can work on the case individually or in small groups using their own laptops. The participants will go away with the working models of that real case and plenty of other free models and methods.

Dynamic modeling and Enterprise Architecture for IS strategic planning

Keynote talks 2015/16 at the Chinese Culture University, Taiwan and Open Group Conference, Edinburgh.

Enterprise Architecure (EA) has strong and extensive foundations based on identifying processes and capabilities required to deliver organisations' strategies and desired performance. 'System dynamics' (SD), in contrast, builds working, quantified models of any enterprise system to simulate how that system develops itself and delivers performance. So, EA looks at how processes act on the 'things and stuff' of the enterprise … SD takes those processes as given, and models how those 'things and stuff' change over time - quantitatively. Processes' effectiveness appears in SD models in the math of the causal relationships - so process *change* alters that math, at whatever point in the system the process is located.

The opportunity, then, is to combine EA and SD into much more powerful dynamic business models than either approach can achieve alone.This presentation will explain these principles, and demonstrate first results from efforts to build such a combined EA<>SD framework and model.

System Dynamics - solve issues and build living business models.


Magna lecture to Systems Engineering students and Faculty, ITESM Mexico City. April 2016

System Dynamics is a powerful method, widely used to solve problems in business and other organisations. However, it’s potential is far greater. A good SD model should not only mimic the behaviour of the organisation it represents, it should also reflect accurately the elements of that system and the past and likely future behaviour of all those items. This makes the model suitable for continual use, to make period-to-period decisions and assist in implementing the organisations strategy.
Playlist consisting of 3 videos:
1. Explains the problems and limitations of common business-model frameworks from consulting firms and taught in business schools with example ..
2. Describes a business case study in marine engineering ..
3. shows a dynamic business model of the case from a conference key-note lecture.

Articles and papers

List of freely available articles and papers. All items may be downloaded by right clicking the 'Open document' button and selecting 'Save...'

Article - Fast and Effective Living Business Models (Paper supporting a workshop at the IEEE 2018 WinterSim Conference, Gothenburg)
This refereed paper explains the need for a more 'agile' approach to building system dynamics simulation models, and describes both the principles and the practical process for doing so. The process has been widely applied, and has proved to be fast and reliable - the emerging model matches observed real-world behaviour at all times. The method is also highly teachable, enabling students and other new-comers to business simulation to create useful models quickly. This "agileSD" process underpins all of our learning materials, especially the online business modeling classes.


Article - System Dynamics: a Core Systems Engineering Capability
This paper outlines what system-dynamics-based business models do - quantified, time-based simulation of any enterprise or issue - and argues that this could be a powerful contribution to Systems Engineers wishing to extend the capability of model-based systems engineering (MBSE). The paper is also summarised in 3 Linked-In Pulse articles, starting at sdl.re/LIPSESD1


Article - Agile System Dynamics
The challenge in any engagement is to provide early insight and actionable findings. In this article Kim Warren shows how this is acheivable. Read more …


Article - The Engineering of Strategy

Most strategy tools are in essence, static and rely on statistical methods. Applying system dynamics to strategy development introduces the ability to deal with real-world mechanisms - delays, interdependencies and feedback. Read more …


Article - The Dynamics of Strategy
First of a trilogy of articles initially published in Business Strategy Review in 1999/2000. Includes improvements to the strategy dynamic method since that time, and updated examples with easy-to-use working, quantified models that readers can access.
First published in Business Strategy Review, 1999, Volume 10 Issue 3 pp 1-16. Republished 2016


Article The Dynamics of Rivalry
This second article in the series explores the three types of rivalry for customers and other assets. First published in Business Strategy Review, 1999, Volume 10 Issue 4 pp 41-54.


Article - The Softer Side of Strategy Dynamics
The last article in this series looks at the impact of intangible issues. First published in Business Strategy Review, 2000, Volume 11 Issue 1 pp 45-58.


Article: Strategic Recovery
Originally published in the Strategic Planning Society magazine, this article has enduring relavency. Read more …

Article: Invisible Ink
Reporting on intangible assets, originally published in Business Strategy Review, Winter 2004, pp 57-65. Read more …

Conference paper: Scenario Dynamics - anticipating industry futures.
This paper summarises a panel session delivered in 2002 at the Strategic Management Society conference.


Conference paper: Strategic Performance and Business Dynamics
Presentation: European CFOs Summit, 2001. Kim Warren builds the case for a strong understanding of key resources and the strategic architecture, taking a retail example. He concludes with Marks and Spencer as the case in point illustrating the effect of not doing so with a look at their problems in the late 1990's.


Conference paper: Fact based Strategic Management
1st World Conference for Systemic Management - Vienna, May 2001. In this paper Kim Warren says that there are near-universal expectations that face top management - they, and their investors, expect the organisation’s performance to progress strongly through time...


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