System thinkers have led our society with their leadership, scientific findings and engineering solutions to advance the quality of life.
Engineers can become societal leaders by leveraging their technical expertise and problem-solving skills to tackle complex social and technical problems. In the past 10 years, I have developed and taught a course at MIT to teach students systems thinking on how to approach and solve large and complex problems and generate deployable solution concepts.
Students have tackled various societal issues as well as technical challenges such as: recurring blackouts in California, end of life support, blocking fake news spread and smart traffic infrastructure to enable full autonomous cars, among many.
For MIT students: 2.777/2.778 “Systems Thinking and Complex Problem Solving,” Fall semester offerings for both undergrads and grads.
For Industrial Executives and Managers: MIT’s Summer Short Course for Industry, “Solving Complex Problems: Structured Thinking, Design Principles and AI”
Above course teache students how to approach systems architecting using design principles to develop concepts for large and complex systems (principle-based approach), as well as structured insights and problem-solving strategies, which have been successfully applied to large and complex national defense systems (experience-based approach, as well as the use of Generative AI for complex systems design. Interactive lectures and in-class projects will guide students in approaching and solving large and complex problems they have never encountered before, helping them acquire the confidence to engage in large-scale system thinking that will have a significant future impact.
