Properly used, design thinking can weave together elements of demographics, research, environmental factors, psychology, anthropology and sociology to generate novel solutions to some of the most puzzling problems in business.
The idea was to generate novel solutions for countering narcotics crime, an enormous internal problem for Mexico but also an expensive and politically explosive border issue for the U.S. (The U.S. will spend more than $3.5 billion on drug interdiction this year, much of it in Mexico).
It aims to generate novel solutions to medical and public health challenges as well as new forms of research that promotes the use of design in healthcare.
Seyfang and Smith (2007) extend this concept by adding a 'green' component: '[it] describe[s] networks of activists and organizations generating novel bottom-up solutions for sustainable development and sustainable consumption; solutions that respond to the local situation and the interests and values of the communities involved.
IHS employs a novel method for generating new solution vectors that enhances accuracy and convergence rate of harmony search (HS) algorithm.
Determine abandoned solutions and generate new solutions randomly using scouts.
These extensions use a particle swarm algorithm to identify Pareto Solutions for multiple QSAR models in descriptor space, following by an evolutionary approach to generate novel structures proximate those solutions.
It categorises them into 'inside the box' methods, which are principally quantitative and draw on a pre-existing list of solutions, and 'outside the box' methods, which are more qualitative but potentially better able to generate wholly novel solutions.
One important implication of dynamical systems theory is that systems can generate novel behaviors (e.g., different solutions for reaching objects) through bodily activity, questioning the need to posit preprogrammed patterns that unfold over time.
