Sveen, Finn with Jose Gonzalez and Richard Sanders, "Applying Generic System Archetypes to a 'Beyond the Core' Challenge", 2005 July 17-2005 July 21
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We describe an attempt to model an enterprises 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 Zooks 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 clients interest in the modeling work. Further joint modeling sessions have been scheduled. Work is still in progress.