Celebrating 40 years of Systems Thinking at the Open University

Researchers at the Open University who have made major contributions to a discipline called systems thinking have just celebrated 40 years of achievement and marked the occasion with a conference at the London School of Economics (LSE) (June 2012).

The LSE event was hosted by Professor Ray Ison, Professor of Systems at the Open University and Professor Eileen Munro CBE, Professor of Social Policy at the LSE. The question that the event posed was how systems thinking and practice can be better “harnessed” for public policy purposes. There was general agreement among those at the conference that those who use systems thinking and practice in public sector settings know, through experience, and evidence in the public record, that systemic approaches deliver benefits. Despite this evidence, much public policy is framed and designed without systematic sensibility.

Helen Wilding one of the Open University’s first Systems Thinking in Practice (STiP) alumnus, gave an inspiring talk on using systems approaches for the double-stranded process of helping groups to work together to understand and seek to improve wellbeing and health and then to extend this to wider partnership working.

Commenting on the LSE event, Helen said:

“Yesterday, I got to meet a number of systems thinkers in the flesh. It was at a joint event arranged by Professor Eileen Munro of the LSE and Professor Ray Ison at the OU…partly to mark 40 years of systems teaching at the OU.

“There were about 30/35 people there – mostly handpicked through systems and public sector networks. Eileen and Ray had designed it as a systemic inquiry using conversational mapping in small table groups. It is easy to get enthused in a room like that – the energy levels were amazing – and the mark of any good meeting is that people didn’t quickly dash off at the end.”

Find out more: 

• Read Ray Ison's blog
• Study for a qualification in Systems thinking and practice
• Listen to the OU podcast on iTunes: Rio+20 - United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development