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!