Robert Hoffman, President of whatIf? Technologies, has accepted the invitation to become an Associate Member of the Club of Rome for a five year term. 

The Club of Rome is an independent global think tank with no particular political, ideological or religious affiliations. Its essential mission is “to act as a global catalyst for change through the identification and analysis of the crucial problems facing humanity and the communication of such problems to the most important public and private decision-makers as well as to the general public.” Its activities should “adopt a global perspective with awareness of the increasing interdependence of nations. They should, through holistic thinking, achieve a deeper understanding of the complexity of contemporary problems and adopt a trans-disciplinary and long-term perspective focusing on the choices and policies determining the destiny of future generations.”

Robert Hoffman became interested in the Club of Rome with the publication in 1973 of The Limits to Growth, the first Report to the Club of Rome prepared by a team of researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. This study made use of a global system dynamics model to create a number of scenarios exploring the dynamics of population and economic growth in a finite material world. The system dynamics concepts in conjunction with the activity analysis concepts of Wasily Leontief provided the twin pillars upon which the whatIf? Technologies approach to socio-economic-resource modeling is based.

As a representative of the Canadian Association for the Club of Rome, Robert Hoffman attended the Club of Rome annual general meetings in Helsinki, 2004, Norfolk Virginia, 2005, Madrid, 2007, Rome 2008, and Amsterdam 2009. 

At its 40th Anniversary Assembly in Rome 2008, the Club launched a three year programme on A New Path for World Development so as to achieve a better understanding of the complex challenges which confront the modern world and to lay solid foundations for the action which must be taken to improve the prospects for peace and progress. One element of the research programme will focus on the issue of systems integration, including systems thinking and systems linkages and systems dynamics modelling. Of course, it is this component of the research programme for which the experience and expertise of Robert Hoffman, particularly with respect to the development of the Global Systems Simulator, is germane.

Related Links

Canadian Association for the Club of Rome
Club of Rome
A New Path for World Development
Global Systems Simulator