Jay Wright Forrester Quotes

7 Sourced Quotes

No plea about inadequacy of our understanding of the decision-making processes can excuse us from estimating decision making criteria. To omit a decision point is to deny its presence – a mistake of far greater magnitude than any errors in our best estimate of the process.

Jay Wright Forrester
Formulating a model of a system should start from the question Where is the boundary, that encompasses the smallest number of components, within which the dynamic behavior under study is generated?

Jay Wright Forrester
In concept a feedback system is a closed system. Its dynamic behavior arises within its internal structure. Any action which is essential to the behavior of the mode being investigated must be included inside the system boundary.

Jay Wright Forrester
[The engineer] must identify the significant and critical problems, but in his education, problems have been predetermined and assigned. He must develop the judgment to know what solutions to problems are possible, but in school the problems encountered are known to have answers. He should be excited by new and unsolved challenges, but for 20 years he has lived in an educational system where he knows he is repeating the work of last year's students.

Jay Wright Forrester
Pestel was a very forceful person and quickly saw the power of system dynamics.

Jay Wright Forrester
Complex systems are counterintuitive. That is, they give indications that suggest corrective action which will often be ineffective or even adverse in its results.

Jay Wright Forrester
The principles governing the behavior of systems are not widely understood.

Jay Wright Forrester