Computerized vicarious experience: the future of management induction?

The last two years have seen a plethora of articles discussing the impact of microcomputers on our lives. This article discusses a strange and unique use for some of the facilities now available as a consequence of recent developments in computers. For the last few years the authors have been developing both a method and computer software which is intended to help people think about and make use of their ideas. This is in contrast to the more common use for computers, where they are seen as number-crunchers able to deal at one extreme with the payroll and, at the other, complicated mathematical programming problems. It has been our intention to exploit the potential computers have for enabling groups of people to explore their ideas in a more careful and systematic way than has hitherto been possible.