This model captures basic information about the systems field in the form of elements and simple relationships, including people, organizations, books, documents, web sites, tools, and quotations. These elements are all instances of a common class model (schema). All are "hard" non-controversial "facts". The value lies in the capability to accumulate such facts over a long period, integrate and unify them, and present them understandably from many perspectives and at various levels of abstraction. And most importantly to improve and extend it indefinitely.

1. Click on 'Systems Common Web' (below left) to enter.

2. Slide left boundary leftward. Ignore far left column.

3. Scroll down to Main Menu.

• "Synthesis, or putting things together, is the key to system thinking just as analysis is the key to Machine-Age thinking." (Ackoff)
  

• "In systems thinking, increases in understanding are believed to be obtainable by expanding the systems to be understood, not by reducing them to their elements. Understanding proceeds from the whole to its parts, not from the parts to the whole as knowledge does." (Ackoff)
  

• "... the ability to synthesize separate findings into a coherent whole is far more critical than the ability to generate information from different perspectives." (Gharajedaghi)
  

• "Synthesis of the various systems theories is in itself a significant contribution to the field of systems thinking."

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