We describe an attempt to model an enterprise’s expansion into business adjacencies within the scope of a Master thesis. It was crucial to define a strategy that would allow the Master student to grow with the task (gain experience with modeling), at the same time ensuring communication with the client and proving the ability of qualitative SD modeling to deliver insights. After identifying problem symptoms, the enterprise problem was explored with methods from Chris Zook: ‘Beyond the Core’. Six cases from Zook’s book offering points of entry for the enterprise problem were cast into generic archetypes and presented to the problem owner. Two archetypes belonging to the “Underachievement” class were identified as most relevant for the enterprise problem, viz. 1) underachievement due to long distance between the core and the adjacency, and 2) underachievement due to poor adjacency repeatability. We developed a preliminary system dynamics model embedding both archetypes. The model gives sensible results with basic policies affecting distance to the core and repeatability. The preliminary results have strengthened the client’s interest in the modeling work. Further joint modeling sessions have been scheduled. Work is still in progress.

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Date created

• 2005 July 17-2005 July 21

Type

• Document

Processing Activity

• Processing documentation available at: https://wiki.albany.edu/display/SCA/Processing+Ingested+Digital+Files

License

• Creative Commons BY-NC-ND Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 International

  
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ITEM CONTEXT

Part of

cc5bb0ac12a5b68b26b1583548898dae

Scope and Contents

Part of

3c582e6f5cf305ef0030c7471b499022

Scope and Contents

Part of

23d738ba88f8333bc39725f9cb5bd0b8

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Collection

System Dynamic Society Records

Scope and Contents

Collecting area

• This collection is part of the University Archives