Abstract

In an increasingly complex, turbulent and rapidly changing environment, enterprise  development actors have their hands full in designing and delivering effective  enterprise development programmes. While enterprise development is a complex  system, it also interacts with the education system and labour market systems,  among other systems, thereby increasing the number of actors/agents within these  systems, their interrelationships and their connectedness. To address this increased  complexity, this paper argues for a systems thinking approach to enterprise  development. The authors will discuss systems thinking concepts, the structure of  enterprise development and their related systems. Three causal loop diagrams and  systems thinking archetypes are used to discuss enterprise development.