This course exposes students to the concepts, tools and techniques necessary to develop an understanding of the challenging area of future foresight, where the focus is on anticipating and initiating future ideas, plans, trends, and issues. The course will cover topics that are relevant and important to today’s leaders, decision makers, entrepreneurs, strategists and others Topics include the future foresight approach with analysis of practice and theory, discussion and analysis of pertinent issues raised by future foresight design and application, future foresight developments and relevant issues, and the impact of future foresight on organizational planning and development. The use of future foresight approaches and tools in the UAE will be benchmarked with international, regional and local settings where lessons will be drawn.

This course focuses on the introduction and use of leading-edge systems thinking and modelling tools that are necessary to diagnose and solve complex business and social problems. Students will learn how to implement a flexible and powerful approach to structuring managerial problems and visualizing the interconnectedness of business, social and environmental systems. The development of skills to conceptualize and build simulation models of an enterprise, enabling the exploration of the dynamic consequences of different strategy/policy decisions and the identification of key leverage points in the system, is a central goal of this course. Systems thinking in business and public policy as it pertains to firm growth and stagnation, competitive strategy, capability development and human resource policies, environmental sustainability, and the boom and bust dynamics of start-up businesses will be explored. Successful Industrial applications of applied systems thinking and business dynamics will be reviewed.

Special topics are experimental courses announced as offered. Variable credit.