CAPSTONE & SYSTEMS THINKING

This course is divided into 3 modules that would take students through the entire journey from coordinating activities within a firm, to competing with firms within an industry, to coordinating and cooperating within industries & nations to deal with global challenges.

Module A – Functional Coordination to Competing within an Industry

Through a business simulation spread across 2 Practice Rounds and 10 Live Rounds, each representing a financial year, the students would get an immersion of a multi-disciplinary, competitive, business decision making setting by taking on the roles of business leaders who take key decisions to set the direction of their respective organizations over a long period of time. The application ensures that the student is acquainted with real-life scenarios and therefore, learns to adopt an effective thought-process. It provides students an opportunity to participate in the process of analyzing complex, ill-defined problems, requiring short, medium, and long-term planning for an organization in a realistic environment.

Module B - Interconnectedness and interdependence in the ecosystem of firms, industry, economy, and society

Through this Module, the course will introduce the notions of systems approach including the mechanistic view and the organismic view. Understanding the difference between control mechanism in the closed and open systems will be part of understanding sustainability. The purpose of this module shall be to facilitate systematic transition from firm level to systems level planning and strategy to flourish.

Module C - Systems Thinking through Managing Climate Change Challenges

“We can’t change the complexity, and we wouldn’t want to – it’s part of what makes our lives and our planet beautiful and interesting. Although we cannot change the complexity, we can work with it. That’s what systems thinking, and its more formal complement ‘system dynamics’, are all about”.

- Climate Interactive

Various nations across the world have pledged to reduce limit warming to no more than 2 degree-centigrade under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). It however seems that the policy makers are lacking capabilities to understand the impact of greenhouse gas (GHG) emitters’ proposal and their impact. In such scenario “Systems Thinking” skills are required to design and implement optimal policy actions in the complex and interconnected world. This module of the CST (Capstone and Systems Thinking) course is designed for the participants to navigate through an experiential exercise of managing for climate change problems and trying to hit the globally agreed targets and learning “systems thinking” skills in a framework of global cooperation and collaboration.

We will be using two simulation platforms, e.g., C-ROADS and EN-ROADS, developed by Climate Interactive and MIT to understand systemic nuances of climate change issues and resistances in managing them.

The objectives of this module are:

1. to understand why global negotiations on climate change issues are complex in nature and managing them are ineffective,

2. to derive learning in interactions of complex issues like climate science, economic develop policies of nations, international relationships, energy policies of countries, intergenerational equity towards dynamics of global challenges like “climate change” and

3. to design, negotiate, and evaluate adverse mitigation policies towards building a sustainable world.

By completing this module, the participants are expected to acquire:

1. Knowledge of complex systems and cross-functionalism in managing messy problems

2. System Thinking skills to visualize the messy problem as an outcome of complex interactions among multiple variables, many stakeholders, and conflicting goals and objectives.

As a result of succeeding in this course, executive students will be able to achieve the following objectives in each of the Modules:

Module 1

1. Understand the dynamics of operating in a competitive environment

2. Appreciate the importance of the annual business planning exercise carried out in organizations

3. Observe the objective of a holistic view and how it is drawn from a detailed analysis by preparing the Vision, Mission, and Objectives of their respective organizations along with subsequent annual business plans

4. Apply concepts learned in Economics, Finance, Production, Marketing, and HR to frame as well implement the Strategy of the organization and hence learn the inter-relations of the various business areas

5. Gauge the impact of their organization’s pricing decision, production planning decision, introducing new products or getting into new markets vis-à-vis the same decisions taken by other organizations

6. Understand how to read the financial statements of different companies so as to examine their own financial health as well as interpret various decisions taken by competitors

7. Learn to work in a team by dividing responsibilities of various functions with the members

8. Translate their outcomes in the form of writing a Letter to the Share-holders

9. Playing the role of business analysts to prepare a Market Outlook Report

Module 2

1. Be able to understand the inherent nature of our interconnectedness and interdependence in the ecosystem of firms, industry, economy, and society.

2. Be able to appreciate the significance of holistic thinking and holistic action.

3. Be able to systematically transit from competition to cooperation that is from a partial and temporal efficiency paradigm to a wholesome and long-term sustainability paradigm

Module 3

1. Improve understanding of the scale, urgency, policies, and actions that have potential to meet international climate goals,

2. Increase the knowledge of climate change causes, dynamics, and impacts,

3. Have effective engagement including greater feeling of urgency and hope,

4. Achieve an immersive, social learning experience

It will be a blend of Lectures and Simulations. The lectures are going to be on theoretical underpinnings and simulations are going to be experiential learning activities followed by debriefing discussions. The 3^rd module is going to follow a pre- and post-test evaluation of participants through questionnaire method.

• Module A would be conducted through the Business Simulation application developed by Cesim Oy (www.cesim.com), a Finland based business simulation company.

• Module 2 would be conducted through lectures and class discussions.

• Module 3 would be using both lecture-based discussion as well as couple of simulations platforms, e.g., C-ROADS and EN-ROADS, developed by Climate Interactive and MIT. [Climate Interactive (https://www.climateinteractive.org/)

• Mental Model Musings (http://www.systems-thinking.org/index.htm)]

Module 1 – 50% (Evaluation will be based on the outcome of the student in the Simulation.)

Module 2 – 25%

Module 3 – 25% (Evaluation will be based on your understanding of systems thinking and skills of managing messy problems. Holistic thinking skills will be evaluated.)