Systems Thinking as a core competence for Sustainable Development and Digital Transformation Erasmus Project

Project Title

Systems Thinking as a core competence for Sustainable Development and Digital Transformation

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for adult education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2020

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Key Competences (incl. mathematics and literacy) – basic skills; Entrepreneurial learning – entrepreneurship education; Environment and climate change

Project Summary

There is a strong awareness that new types of skills are necessary if companies and public organizations are to face successfully the immensely complex and interconnected situations that are increasingly being witnessed. Let’s consider as an example the recent Covid-19 pandemic, whose understanding has undergone various interpretations and has provided for a lot of confusion in data understanding regarding the number of infected people per day, number of deaths and recoveries, etc., notwithstanding the fact that an epidemic has a typical behaviour over time (which depends on its peculiar aspects). In other words, making sense of phenomena requires not only the capability to interpret data but to interpret the behaviour of the system underlying the generation of that data. In other words, we need to move from just the understanding of symptoms to the capability to understand the root causes, without “guessing” them (as it basically happens with stochastic methods), but by referring them to a systemic structure. This realization has entered the public limelight and companies/institutions are raising their attention to the need to bridge a gap in the amount of people in the organization with such appropriate skills that could in turn also teach/educate/train other employees; these skills are not limited anymore to technical knowledge but encompass an entire pool of transversal skills that include the ability to think critically, the spirit of initiative, the ability to solve problems in groups, to share a common vision, to get away from wrong mental models and cognitive biases, the capability to differentiate between an accumulation process and the accumulation itself (i.e.: deficit and public debt) etc.: in other words, the capability to think in systems. Such types of skills may appear abstract and vague, but they are exactly what will be required if we are to face and solve successfully many of the largest issues of the 21st century. Among these issues, in this project we will apply these skills to two very important aspects needed to change the way we live everyday on this planet: sustainable development and digital transformation.

Thus, the objective of the project will be to prepare and train in Systems Thinking (ST) the next generation of people that will become the trainers of tomorrow and that will be increasingly needed in public and private organizations across Europe. ST has become a key competence and can be considered as a way of thinking aimed at solving complex problems related to real-world uncertainty. It starts from the basic principle that the world is a system of highly interconnected natural, technical and social entities, hierarchically organized to produce behaviors observable by stakeholders. So, ST is a tool with which it is possible to describe a system as a whole (in other words, by explicitly addressing the various interdependencies that are acting in a system and its non-linearities), highlighting its dynamic nature and the interactions that occur among the elements of the system and avoiding any simplification and/or linearization (linear thinking has led decision makers to take linear decisions in a deeply non-linear world, hence producing huge disasters).
This systemic frame of mind is based on the following fundamental notions:
the ability to know how to observe and grasp the “circular” nature of the world in which we live
awareness of the role of the “systems” structure in determining the situations we face
the understanding that there are potentially unexpected consequences for the actions we take
the understanding of the presence of delays between action and consequences
the understanding of stocks and flows dynamics (i.e.: the dynamics of accumulation processes)

The project will hence build on the above mentioned initiatives and ultimately produce a completely new educational framework that sees the application of ST to two key aspects in the future development of humankind: digital transformations and the goals of the Agenda 2030.
To achieve the objectives of the project the following activities will be implemented:
-Teach ST skills and approach
-Teach System Dynamics as the operational/mathematical declination of ST
-Build and develop relevant knowledge belonging to the issues of sustainable development and digital transformation and develop the mental and mathematical models that will synthesize and analyze the knowledge
-Develop interdisciplinary connections and improve activities and methods aimed at shaping ST skills and the systems approach
-Create small synthetic environments where it will be possible to examine any studied content also under the influence of external conditions
-Build and develop self-management skills
At the end of the project, a pool of trainers – thus equipped with systems thinking skills – will be available and, through the project network, ready to act as systems thinking teachers/trainers to private and public organizations.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 297510 Eur

Project Coordinator

SYSTEM DYNAMICS ITALIAN CHAPTER & Country: IT

Project Partners

• Intellegere Società Cooperativa Sociale
• UNIVERSITY OF MACEDONIA
• CSI CENTER FOR SOCIAL INNOVATION LTD
• Alleanza Italiana per lo Sviluppo Sostenibile
• KOMPASS-ZENTRUM FUR EXISTENZGRUNDUNGEN, FRANKFURT AM MAIN, GMBH
• Olus Academy Ltd