While it’s important to appreciate the systems thinking foundations laid down by the Tavistock Institute and U. Pennsylvania Social Systems Science (S3, called S-cubed) program, practically all of the original researchers are no longer with us. Luminaries who have passed include Eric L. Trist (-1993), Fred E. Emery (-1997), and Russell L. Ackoff (-2009). This does not mean that systems research has stopped.
One individual who participated in it all is David L. Hawk.
- In 1972, he started at U. Pennsylvania in the master’s program in Architecture and Urban Planning, then continuing to complete a Ph.D. in Social Systems Science in 1979.
- We were both at the 1998 meeting in Atlanta of the International Society for the Systems Sciences, and then were side-by-side disagreeing with everyone else at a roundtable at the 1999 Villanova meeting for “Russell L. Ackoff and the Advent of Systems Thinking“.
- After disappointment at the program at the ISSS Toronto 2000 meeting, four of us — DLH, Minna Takala, Ian D. Simmonds and myself — informally met as the Systemic Business Community. We met around IBM Palisades and northern New Jersey. This extended to a Symposium on Inter-Organizational Relations in Finland in 2003, and an IFSR Conversation in Austria in 2004.
We have been continuously been collaborators ever since. DLH served as the thesis advisor for Aalto University on my Open Innovation Learning research.… Read more (in a new tab)
While it’s important to appreciate the systems thinking foundations laid down by the Tavistock Institute and U. Pennsylvania Social Systems Science (S3, called S-cubed) program, practically all of the original researchers are no longer with us. Luminaries who have passed include Eric L. Trist (-1993), Fred E. Emery (-1997), and Russell L. Ackoff (-2009). This does not mean that systems research has stopped.
One individual who participated in it all is David L. Hawk.
- In 1972, he started at U. Pennsylvania in the master’s program in Architecture and Urban Planning, then continuing to complete a Ph.D. in Social Systems Science in 1979.
- We were both at the 1998 meeting in Atlanta of the International Society for the Systems Sciences, and then were side-by-side disagreeing with everyone else at a roundtable at the 1999 Villanova meeting for “Russell L. Ackoff and the Advent of Systems Thinking“.
- After disappointment at the program at the ISSS Toronto 2000 meeting, four of us — DLH, Minna Takala, Ian D. Simmonds and myself — informally met as the Systemic Business Community. We met around IBM Palisades and northern New Jersey. This extended to a Symposium on Inter-Organizational Relations in Finland in 2003, and an IFSR Conversation in Austria in 2004.
We have been continuously been collaborators ever since. DLH served as the thesis advisor for Aalto University on my Open Innovation Learning research.… Read more (in a new tab)
