Strategic planning expert William Rouse cuts to the heart of the most common causes of failed business plans and strategies and shows how to overcome them. He encourages strategic thinkers and planners to spend much more time analyzing a situation instead of jumping to ready solutions. The tone is tongue-in-cheek, but the keen observations and sage advice Rouse offers aptly address a serious subject. It's a fast-track primer in critical thinking and evaluation planners and managers at every level can use to approach their work more effectively.

Examines current and prospective challenges surrounding global challenges of education, energy, healthcare, security, and resilience

This book discusses issues in large-scale systems in the United States and around the world. The authors examine the challenges of education, energy, healthcare, national security, and urban resilience. The book covers challenges in education including America's use of educational funds, standardized testing, and the use of classroom technology. On the topic of energy, this book examines debates on climate, the current and future developments...

Explains multi-level models of enterprise systems and covers modeling methodology

This book addresses the essential phenomena underlying the overall behaviors of complex systems and enterprises. Understanding these phenomena can enable improving these systems. These phenomena range from physical, behavioral, and organizational, to economic and social, all of which involve significant human components. Specific phenomena of interest and how they are represented depend on the questions of interest and the relevant domains or contexts. Modeling and Visualization of Complex...

This book is about people who operate, maintain, design, research, and manage complex systems, ranging from air traffic control systems, process control plants and manufacturing facilities to industrial enterprises, government agencies and universities. The focus is on the nature of the work these types of people perform, as well as the human abilities and limitations that usually enable and sometimes hinder their work. In particular, this book addresses how to best enhance abilities and overcome limitations, as well as foster acceptance of the means to these ends.

Explores the nature of academic enterprises, including why they work the way they do and where such enterprises are headed, with the goal of gaining insights into where change can and will happen

This book looks at universities from a whole-enterprise perspective. It explores the steady escalation of the costs of higher education and uses a computational economic model of complex academic enterprises. This model includes component models of research, teaching, administration, and brand value. Understanding the relationships among practices, processes, structure, and...

Fundamental Economic Principles, Methods, and Tools for Addressing Human Systems Integration Issues and Tradeoffs

Human Systems Integration (HSI) is a new and fundamental integrating discipline designed to help move business and engineering cultures toward more human-centered systems. Integrating consideration of human abilities, limitations, and preferences into engineering systems yields important cost and performance benefits that otherwise would not have been accomplished. In order for this new discipline to be effective, however, a cultural change--starting with organizational...

Illustrating the major strategic challenges faced by executives and senior managers, this text articulates a range of choices of methods and tools rather than advocating one particular method. Featuring case studies from industry, government and non-profit organisations, the text integrates experiences and challenges told by thousands of executives.

From modeling and simulation to games and entertainment

With contributions from leaders in systems and organizational modeling, behavioral and social sciences, computing and visualization, and gaming and entertainment, Organizational Simulation both articulates the grand vision of immersive environments and shows, in detail, how to realize it. This book offers unparalleled insight into the cutting edge of the field, since it was written by those who actually researched, designed, developed, deployed, marketed, sold, and critiqued today's best organizational simulations.

From modeling and simulation to games and entertainment

With contributions from leaders in systems and organizational modeling, behaviora...

Of related interest. Design for Success A Human-Centered Approach to Designing Successful Products and Systems William B. Rouse This groundbreaking book offers a comprehensive, methodological framework for the human-centered design of complex systems. This dynamic new approach to system design includes four phases -- naturalist, marketing, engineering, and sales and service -- which cover the entire product life cycle, including:
* Evaluating users' needs and preferences
* Concept and market evaluation of alternative ways to satisfy these demands
* Detailed design and...

In the field of engineering like many others, foreign competitors are beating U.S. businesses to the punch in terms of bringing new products successfully to the marketplace. How can U.S. engineering companies compete? Simply by turning to this thought-provoking work which answers these and many other questions of successful design products and systems that are market driven and user oriented. Using a comprehensive methodological framework for human-centered design of complex systems, it covers four phases: naturalist, marketing, engineering, sales and service. A wide variety of tools and...