Jay Wright Forrester

Jay Wright Forrester was a seminal figure in both the development of digital computing and the pioneering application of computer simulation to complex social and economic systems. Born in Anselmo, Nebraska, in 1918, Forrester's intellectual journey began in electrical engineering, leading him…

Key facts

Role
Computer Scientist, Systems Scientist, Management Scientist, Researcher
Nationality
American
Born
1918
Died
2016

Notable quotes

The most important ideas in system dynamics are often counter-intuitive.
The future of the world depends on understanding the structure of systems.
We are prisoners of the policies that we ourselves create.
Intuition and judgment can produce successful results when applied to simple systems but are apt to produce failures when applied to complex systems.
In a complex system, the cause of problems is not found in the symptoms but in the structure of the system that generates the behavior.