Prototyping

The Abductive Advantage ← Series Home The failure of Blockbuster illustrated how traditional, deductive strategy—focused on analyzing backward-looking historical data—cannot withstand rapid environmental change. The modern imperative is to adopt Design Thinking for Strategy (DTS), which relies on abductive reasoning, starting with deep customer observation (as discussed in Post 01) and iteratively refining solutions. Once the crucial insights and knowledge have been gathered in the initial phases (Observing and Learning), the strategy challenge shifts from understanding the present to designing the future. This shift demands moving concepts off the abstract whiteboard and transforming them into tangible, testable models. ...

The Engineering Journey ← Series Home The Shift from Specification to Sympathy In the previous post, we established that successful engineering design is a rigorous, multidisciplinary, and often iterative decision-making process that applies science and art to meet a societal or market need. We also noted that traditional or conventional design, often characterized by the “over-the-wall” approach, frequently leads to costly missteps because technical teams become isolated from the ultimate user. ...

The Engineering Journey ← Series Home The Moment of Truth: From Concept to Blueprint In the preceding stages of the design journey, the team engaged in a broad, expansive process: first, observing and empathizing with human needs (design thinking); second, translating those ambiguous needs into measurable technical metrics (Quality Function Deployment); and third, generating and evaluating a plethora of creative ideas (conceptual design). The output of those efforts was a single, approved candidate concept, selected through rigorous evaluation, such as the Decision Matrix Technique. ...