beliefs. And, in so doing, it lays
the foundation for truly insightful synthesis to take place.
This form of thinking allows
us to challenge the sacred cows
of an industry. Should shareholder value trump worker
rights in business? What would
happen if all foreign debts were
forgiven? Is the user always
right, or are they sometimes
selfish and misguided, and is
this one of those times?
Deconstruction helps us
to ask better research questions, thereby allowing us
to learn things that may
never have come to light.
Knowing that an assumption is really an assumption
provides for an opportunity
to learn something critical.
Abduction and Synthesis
Of all the qualities of design,
abductive thinking and synthesis are perhaps the most
critical.
In synthesis we see the
epitome of the breakthrough
idea, the ability to pull together
disconnected ideas and arrive
at something new and meaningful: the folding bicycle, the
bamboo computer case, public
bike sharing, Zipcar.
Photograph by Ron Tamondong
Methods for encouraging and facilitating abductive thinking and synthesis
are not well explored, but
they do exist [ 2]. They include
the need for immersion in
the problem space—through
research, observation, and
reflection—and a willingness
to deliberately play with seemingly absurd connections.
To return to an earlier
example, what if shareholders
were viewed as capital service
providers for workers? What
if the enterprise were viewed
as a collective endeavor with
capital rated as one input with
no greater importance than the
knowledge and expertise of the
workforce? How would that new
conceptualization play out in
areas like dividends and owner-
ship, intellectual property, and
organizational longevity?
