Report of the activities done by the
System Dynamics Italian Chapter in the year 2000
By Carmine Bianchi
During the year 2000 main activities carried out by people involved in the Chapter have been devoted to four main streams of action:
The organisation of the 2002 ISDC in Palermo is going ahead. We have received a formal letter from the University of Palermo that has given us the availability of the Palazzo Steri (the headquarter of the University) for plenary sessions and the Province of Palermo that has allowed us to use the Loggiato S. Bartolomeo, for parallel sessions.
Both premises are very beautiful monuments that give an excellent idea of the Italian historical roots (Palazzo Steri was built in the XII century). They are located in the same area (Piazza Marina, a very old square in the Palermo downtown).
A pre-conference meeting has been organised in Palermo last July and another one will be organised in February. During the next months all various activities concerning the conference logistics, promotion and social events, sponsorships, etc. will be developed. Our goal is to define all these items before the organisation meeting with the programme chair (Paal Davidsen) and the International Conference Manager (Roberta Spencer), that will be held in Palermo in September 2001.
A conference on SD is planned to be organised by the University of Modena, by Carlo Brugnoli and Edoardo Mollona, in the 2001.
A conference will be organised by CUSA-System Dynamics Group (University of Palermo), on 8th June 2001, as a conclusion of a project involving the application of SD to small medium enterprises in the wine sector.
A workshop on SD & Management Control Systems will be organised at the Association of Entrepreneurs of the Palermo Province, on 9th June 2001.
In the last two events Paal Davidsen and Graham Winch have been invited as guest speakers.
A web page of the Chapter has been developed (http://www.unipa.it/~bianchi/ita/sydic.htm) in order to facilitate the exchange of information between people who are interested in SD. Also an electronic mailing list has been improved, as part of the services offered in the web page.
SD courses are held by several Universities: Bocconi, Foggia, LIUC, Lugano, Palermo, Roma, Venezia.
Also post-graduate courses have been organised by: CUSA-System Dynamics Group and SDA-Bocconi.
Several SD research projects have been started and developed in the 2000.
Help S.p.A. (Rome) has concluded a large European project on the application of SD to the winery sector.
CUSA-System Dynamics Group has been carrying out four research projects. One of them has been conducted on behalf of the Science Park of Sicily and concerns the use of SD to support business plans drawing up. Another one is related to the use of SD as a management control system tool in winery companies. A third project has been recently financed by the European Commission on the subject: Globalising European SMEs in the world trade system. A forth project is a survey on the impact of e-commerce on European SMEs’ growth
Another research project has been concluded by Bocconi and Palermo Universities on the use of SD as a tool to design and operationalise business strategies.
A new book has been published by Carmine Bianchi, on SD as a learning tool in SMEs.
Another book is going to be completed by Edoardo Mollona.
Several papers have been published on various journals, both in Italian and English.
In order to establish contacts with other scientific communities, SD papers have also been presented to the Accademia Italiana di Economia Aziendale, European Academy of Management, European Institute for Advanced Studies in Management, International Council of Small Business.