In my work on business models I always felt intuitively that there are as many connections to systems thinking as they are between systems and networks, but I never had the opportunity to explore these links further. That is until a project with Philadelphia University offered the opportunity to dig a bit deeper into the matter. The project was in the context of Philadelphia University’s Fellow Program, which exposes the faculty of the College for Design, Engineering and Commerce (DEC) to pairs of Fellows from different disciplines through 1-2 day workshops.
For this particular workshop I teamed up with Prof. Jeremy Bowes of OCAD University, who teaches the graduate course “Understanding Systems” in the Strategic Foresight & Innovation program and who was on sabbatical and ready for that kind of exploration. Over several weeks Jeremy and I worked hard on comparing approaches, vocabulary and concepts until we had a common foundation to actually talk about the workshop’s content itself. From there our exploration began and slowly a common vision of the interplay between systems and business models started to emerge. We presented our understanding of that interplay at the Philadelphia workshop on December 14 and 15, which was well received. Now the exploration continues and there are many more insights to gain.
Philadelphia’s DEC College is in itself a bold experiment in interdisciplinary post-secondary education, building a common core between the faculties of Design, Engineering and Commerce. By creating the space for faculty and fellows to explore and experiment they are creating an excellent innovation environment to bring much needed answers to the state of post-secondary education.
