The three innovation phases of IDT

The four decision domains explained above sets three stages of innovation in IDT.

The four domains of decisions in IDT

Our IDT is based on a sociotechnical paradigm, where social interactions impact on technical decisions, which, in turns, influence future social interactions. These social and technical cycles continue dynamically and indefinitely, bringing out unlimited amounts of opportunities for innovation. Unlike traditional approaches where the social dimension of "who" and "why" questions and the technical dimension of "what" and "how" questions are treated separately in isolation, our sociotechnical IDT follows the cycle of "who-why-what-how" questions.

The four sociotechnical questions of "who-why-what-how" suggest that all required information and decisions in an innovation endeavor can be organized into four different types, each of which is called a "domain" in IDT. An IDT "domain" represents a distinguishable type of decisions for innovation. In other words, all decisions in the same domain must be of the same type in IDT. The reason for distinguishing the decision types and hence defining four decision "domain" is because, as the innovator makes decisions from the abstract market demands to the tangible physical artifacts in the downstream that can satisfy those upstream demands, the type of innovation decisions that he/she is making actually change characteristically and practically. It is important to understand these differences so that a conceptual structure can be defined to guide and support different decision-making activities along the innovation process.

The first IDT domain, which is the most abstract one at the upstream, is called the "market" domain in which all information and decisions are related to the customer needs and emerging wants that set the contexts for the innovation targets to be chosen by the innovator next. We use "market demands" (MD) to denote this decision domain in IDT.

The second IDT domain is called the "requirement" domain in which all information and decisions are related to the choices and specifications of requirements (of the things to be innovated in the functional space) that should be realized in order to satisfy the above market demand. We use "functional requirement" (FR) to denote this decision domain in IDT.

The third IDT domain is called the "concept" domain in which all information and decisions are relatedto the proposed ideas and concepts that


First, the purpose of those "who" question is to gather all information that relates to the targeted customers on the market, and hence it forms a decision domain, called the "market" domain. Second, the

The Sociotechnical Paradigm of IDT

The sociotechnical systems (STS) approach originated from research in complex organizational work design, which focuses on the dynamic interaction between people and technology in a workplaces. It is devoted to the effective blending of both the technical and social systems of an organization. These two aspects must be considered interdependently, because arrangements that are optimal for one may not be optimal for the other and trade-offs are often required. Thus, for effective organization design, there is need for both dual focus and joint optimization.The sociotechnical term was first coined in the 1960s by Eric Trist, Ken Bamforth and Fred Emery, who were working as consultants at the Tavistock Institute in London. Nowadays, the original STS concept has been greatly expanded to include approaches and theories regarding the social aspects of people and society, and technical aspects of organizational structure and processes.

So, why is IDT related to STS? 

The first reason is because the term "innovation" used in our IDT approach is defined as a market-oriented notion. The market demand, which is the starting point of any innovative endeavors, is determined by the emerging preferences of intended customers, which, in turns, is dynamically influenced by the social interactions among people on the market. Such cycles involve people and organizations, which represents the social part of the sociotechnical system of IDT. In others words, the opportunity (or the end/goal) for innovation is always determined by the market, which is "social" in nature. 

At the same time, while our IDT approach is domain-independent and applicable to different professions, it is especially useful for those innovative ideas that must be carried out (or instantiated in the real world) by applications of some technologies. These include any technical artifacts such as products, processes, services and systems, and give raise to the technical part of the sociotechnical system of IDT. In others words, the implementations (or the means) for innovation are mostly based on technology, which is "technical" in nature. 

The outcomes from IDT is an artifact which, according to the definition by Herbert Simon, must be both purposeful and functional. The purposefulness of an artifact is defined by the social reality including many people factors and market conditions that influence customers' preferences; whereas the function of an artifact is derived from the brute reality that is realized by certain technologies based on the laws of the nature. According to STS theory, this dual character of innovation outcomes (i.e., artifacts must be both purposeful and functional) lead to the requirement that innovation approaches must be both social and technical. 

This is why our IDT approach is based on the sociotechnical paradigm, rather than those conventional views that often treat technical and social aspects of a system separately. Traditionally, technical activities are modeled as a "question-answer" pair from "what" to "how", in which the question is "what" do you want to have and the answer is "how" to achieve what you desire to have. What (i.e., the goal) is often given to (or prescribed for) engineers a prior by an external party, and the technical job is to find the best how (i.e., the means) that can achieve the given what under different constraints (which are also determined by external parties). The important questions of "who" (who are the customers) and "why" (why are they not satisfied with what they currently have), that can only be answered by social insights and understandings, are often handled separately by non-technical units of an organization (such as marketing or service departments). This large separation between technical and social activities is a major hindrance of effective technology developments and deployments in today's business organizations.

In our sociotechnical paradigm for IDT, the "who-to-why" social dimension and the "what-to-how" technical dimension are integrated to form a continuous "who-why-what-how" sociotechnical cycle. The innovator always begins an innovation task by asking the "who" question to determine who are the customers that he/she is charged to serve. Then, he/she will ask the "why" question to understand why these customers are not happy and satisfied with what they currently have (i.e., to know the current customer needs and possible opportunity gaps). The insights that have to be gathered during the why stage of this sociotechnical paradigm should also include deep understandings of the evolving trends of customers' lifestyles due to new technology developments and market competitions (i.e., to predict the emerging customer wants). Those important insights of current needs and emerging wants will then guide the innovator to the next stage of "what" questions, where abstract thinking is used to choose a set of functional requirements, that when realized by innovative products or services, can bring a new meaning to customers' lifestyles. These choosen functional requirements are the targets of innovation, which will be addressed by the next stage of "how" questions to instantiate the artifact details that satisfy the innovation targets. After the innovated artifacts (i.e., how) are introduced onto the market, they will further shape the customers and their lifestyles, giving rise to new innovation opportunities during the next sociotechnical cycle.

This sociotechnical paradigm of IDT will be further elaborated with specific innovation stages and reasoning steps during future blogs. So, stay tuned!

IDT is different from traditional problem solving

Innovative Design Thinking (IDT) is holistic, contextual, rational, system, synthetic, functional, thing-neutral, demand-led, want-pull, abstract-to-detail, socio-technical thinking, and any combinations of the above. So, how is it compared with traditional problem solving after all?

In a typical problem-solving situation, a problem description (or solution requirement) with as much details as possible is defined and given by an external party. The problem solver is tasked to find a solution that can achieve the objective of these given requirements under various constraints. The path from a problem (i.e., what is required) to a solution (i.e., how to fulfill this requirement) is direct but often iterative. The problem solver needs to know as much about the problem description, and must follow very precisely the solution requirements that were prescribed. All the creative focus and energy are devoted to finding a solution to a well-defined problem along the what-to-how path.

Innovative design thinking is a different problem-solving scenario. The innovator is first presented with a problem description with some solution requirements. However, not all the details have to be specified (or known) because this given problem description only serves as a starting point to stimulate innovative thinking, rather than a fixed target for finding solutions, of an innovation adventure. Rather than jumping into the solution mode directly right away, the innovator must first gain more insights of the targeted problem domain by asking questions such as "who" and "why". The who question relates to who are the intended customers of this targeted domain, and the why question asks why they are not happy with what they current already have from market competitors.

These knowledge about current customer needs and market competitions provide the innovator with useful insights (i.e., a base) for "innovating the opportunity", which is an important phase that does not exist in traditional problem solving. During this opportunity innovation phase, the innovator must extrapolate from the current needs to some emerging trends that predict future customer wants. Opportunities for breakthrough innovation, which is a special kind of innovation that will be precisely defined later, can happen later if the innovator is able to identify a new trend that can radically redefine the meaning of the product or service (i.e., the new opportunity) to be innovated in customers' mind at this initial phase of IDT.

Once a new opportunity for innovation is discovered, the innovator can then choose a set of functional requirements that, when fully realized in the physical world, can satisfy this new opportunity. Note that these functional requirements for IDT here (i.e., what) are chosen by the innovator, which is very different from those solution requirements given by external parties (or customers) in traditional problem solving. With these self-chosen what, the innovator can then move to the next phase of "innovating the solution" where possible "how" (the innovative solution) for the "what" (the newly discovered opportunity).

In short, IDT has two interrelated phases: first innovate the opportunity and then innovate the solution. The former must be rationally derived from social reality, and ensures "doing the right thing"; whereas the latter should be optimally derived from brute reality, and strives for "doing the thing right". The what-to-how path in IDT is largely self-defined by the innovator based on his/her insights gained from asking the "who" and "why" questions, rather than been completely prescribed by others. This IDT path follows closely the socio-technical paradigm of who, why, what and how cycle that will be explained later. 

Special Characteristics of IDT

Definitions by words are never completely clear nor semantically precise. To further clarify the meaning of IDT in general and illustrate the features of our IDT approach specifically, we contrast IDT with the traditional thinking styles as follow.

IDT is characterized by the following thinking styles:

• Holistic (versus reductionist) thinking
• reductionist thinking, while valid for scientific discoveries, is the biggest enemy of breakthrough innovation and creative design
• Contextual (versus content) thinking 
• context is important because it is what makes the content knowledge sensible, applicable and useful 
• Rational (versus optimal) thinking 
• rationality is exhibited by taking actions that are always in consist with the previously set objectives
• System (versus component) thinking 
• system as a whole is always bigger than the sum of all its components
• Synthetic (versus analytic) thinking 
• creative synthesis is not the same as, and can never be achieved by, iterative analyses 
• Functional (versus physical) thinking 
• focus on functional purposes of artifacts enables one to really think-outside-the-box from the beginning
• Thing-neutral (versus solution-specific) thinking 
• never pursue innovative design thinking with a specific solution in mind to begin with
• Demand-led (versus supply-pushed) thinking
• the mother of invention is curiosity while the mother of invention is demand 
• Want-pull (versus need-driven) thinking 
• human wants set the price on market whereas human needs determine the costs in factory
• Abstract-to-detail (versus detail-to-abstract) thinking
• abstract demands must be systematically transformed into tangible details with a structure
• Socio-technical (versus pure-technical) thinking
• social dynamics affect technical decisions which in turns influence future social interactions 

We will further explain the details of each comparison above in the following blogs. Stay tuned!

What is Innovative Design Thinking?

IDT is many things to many people...

The term of "innovative design thinking" or simply "design thinking" means different things to different people. The Innovative Design Thinking (IDT) approach developed by Stephen Lu is a structured thinking framework that supports design decision-making systematically from abstract demands to detail artifacts in order to achieve breakthrough innovations.

• The IDT goal is to attain breakthrough innovation that occurs when the old meaning of a product/service is being radically redefined in customers’ minds, making existing market competitions largely irrelevant 
• The IDT process is derived from theories of design that prescribe a decision-making structure from upstream “what” to downstream “how” with fundamental design axioms 
• The IDT reasoning is based on rigorous thinking steps that use two different propositional logics to generate, compare and select, and improve innovative ideas

There exist many proposals and approaches of design thinking in academia and industry from both business and engineering communities, most of which lack

• Clear definitions of what is innovation and what types of innovation that the approach is targeting 
• Explicit references to the vast amount of proven knowledge and results from prior research in design and decision making 
• Theoretical foundations that can provide rigorous reasoning methods with specific "how-to" steps based on the power of logics 

The IDT presented here is different because it

• Targets at breakthrough innovation with a clear definition 
• Is based on established design theories and methodologies 
• Has a logic foundation that is theoretically sound and rigorous