a problem well defined is half solved justify

John Dewey ( October 20 1859 – June 1 1952 ) was an American philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer. A major figure in the Pragmatist school of American philosophy, his work has been widely influential in a wide range of fields.

• 1 Misc. Quotes
• 2 Quotes from Art as Experience (1934)
• 3 Democracy and Education (1916)
• 4 Experience and Nature (1925)
• 5 How we think (1910)
• 6 Logic: Theory of Inquiry (1938)
• 7 Time and Individuality (1940)
• 8 Misattributed
• 9 Quotes about John Dewey
• 10 External links

Misc. Quotes [ edit ]

• Self-Realization as the Moral Ideal (1893)
• The Need of an Industrial Education in an Industrial Democracy (1916)
• Human Nature and Conduct (1921) Part 1 Section IV.
• Experience and Nature (1925), Ch. VI: Nature, Mind and the Subject
• The Quest for Certainty (1929), Ch. XI
• Quoted in John Dewey and American Democracy by Robert Westbrook (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991), p. 440; cited in Understanding Power (2002) by Noam Chomsky , ch. 9, footnote 16; originally from "The Need for a New Party" (1931) by John Dewey, Later Works 6, p. 163. (Via Westbrook.)
• The American Background , Freedom and Culture (1939)
• Democracy and Human Nature , Freedom and Culture (1939)
• Quoted by Dorothy Canfield Fisher in Vermont Tradition (1953)

Quotes from Art as Experience (1934) [ edit ]

"The difference between the artificial and the artful in the artistic lies on the surface in the former there is a split between what is overly done and what is intended. The appearance is one of cordiality; the intent is that of gaining favor. Whenever this split between what is done and its purpose exists, there is insincerity, a trick, a simulation of an act that intrinsically has another effect. When the natural and the cultivated blend into one, acts of social intercourse are works of art. The animating impulsion of genial friendship and the deed performed completely coincide without intrusion of ulterior motive. Awkwardness may prevent adequacy of expression."

"If one examines the reason why certain works of art offend us, one is likely to find that the cause is that there is no personally felt emotion guiding the selecting the assembling of the materials presented. We derive the impression that the artist, say the author of a novel, is trying to regulate by conscious intent the nature of the emotion aroused. We are irritated by a feeling that he is manipulating materials to secure an effect decided upon in advance. The facets of the work, the variety so indispensable to it, are held together by some external force. The movement of the parts and the conclusion disclose no logical necessity. The author, not the subject matter, is the arbiter.

"In reading a novel, even one written by an expert craftsman, one may get a feeling early in the story that hero or heroine is doomed, doomed not by anything inherent in situations and character but by the intent of the author who makes the character a puppet to set forth his own cherished idea. The painful feeling that results is resented not because it is painful but because it is foisted upon us by something that we feel comes from outside the movement of the subject matter. A work may be much more tragic and yet leave us with an emotion of fulfillment instead of irritation. We are reconciled to the conclusion because we feel it is inherent in the movement of the subject matter portrayed. The incident is tragic but the world in which such fateful things happen is not an arbitrary and imposed world. The emotion of the author and that aroused in us are occasioned by scenes in that world and they blend with subject matter. It is for similar reasons that we are repelled by the intrusion of a moral design in literature while we esthetically accept any amount of moral content if it is held together by a sincere emotion that controls the material. A white flame of pity or indignation may find material that feeds it and it may fuse everything assembled into a vital whole." -- pg 71

"Just because emotion is essential to that act of expression which produces a work of art, it is easy for inaccurate analysis to misconceive its mode of operation and conclude that the work of art has emotion for its significant content. One may cry out with joy or even weep upon seeing a friend from whom one has been long separated. The outcome is not an expressive object -- save to the onlooker. But if the emotion leads one to gather material that is affiliated to the mood which is aroused, a poem may result. In the direct outburst, an objective situation is the stimulus, the cause, of the emotion. In the poem, objective material becomes the content and matter of the emotion, not just its evocative occasion." -- pg 71-72

"In the development of an expressive act, the emotion operates like a magnet drawing to itself appropriate material: appropriate because it has an experienced emotional affinity for the state of mind already moving. Selection and organization of material are at once a function and a test of the quality of the emotion experienced. In seeing a drama, beholding a picture, or reading a novel, we may feel that the parts do not hang together. Either the maker had no experience that was emotionally toned, or, although having at the outset a felt emotion, it was not sustained, and a succession of unrelated emotions dictated the work. In the latter case, attention wavered and shifted, and an assemblage of incongruous parts ensued. The sensitive observer or reader is aware of junctions and seams, of holes arbitrarily filled in. Yes, emotion must operate. But it works to effect continuity of movement, singleness of effect amid variety. It is selective of material and directive of its order and arrangement. But it is not what is expressed. Without emotion, there may be craftsmanship, but not art; it may be present and be intense, but if it is directly manifested the result is also not art." -- pg 72

"The determination of the mot juste , of the right incident in the right place, of exquisiteness of proportion, of the precise tone, hue, and shade that helps unify the whole while it defines a part, is accomplished by emotion. Not every emotion, however, can do this work, but only one informed by material that is grasped and gathered. Emotion is informed and carried forward when it is spent indirectly in search for material and in giving it order, not when it is directly expended." -- pg 73

"I do not think that the dancing and singing of even little children can be explained wholly on the basis of unlearned and unformed responses to then existing objective conditions. Clearly there must be something in the present to evoke happiness. But the act is expressive only a there is in it a unison of something stored from past experience, something therefore generalized, with present conditions. In the case of expressions of happy children the marriage of past values and present incidents takes place easily; there are few obstructions to be overcome, few wounds to heal, few conflicts to resolve. With maturer persons, the reverse is the case. Accordingly the achievement of complete unison is rare; but when it occurs it is so on a deeper level and with a fuller content of meaning. And then, even though after long incubation and after precedent pangs of labor, the final expression may issue with the spontaneity of the cadenced speech or rhythmic movement of happy childhood." 74

"There are in our minds in solution a vast number of emotional attitudes, feelings ready to be re-excited when the proper stimulus arrives, and more than anything else it is these forms, this residue of experience, which, fuller and richer than in the mind if the ordinary man, constitute the artist’s capital. What is called the magic of the artist resides in his ability to transfer these values from one field of experience to another, to attach them to objects of our common life, and by his imaginative insight make these objects poignant and momentous. Not colors, not sense qualities as such, are either matter or form, but these qualities as thoroughly imbued, impregnated, with transferred value. And then they are either matter or form according to the direction of our interest." 123

"It cannot be inserted too strongly That what is not immediate is not esthetic."

"We cannot grasp any idea, any organ of meditation, we cannot possess it in full force, until we have felt and sensed it, as much so as if it were an odor or a color."

"When there is genuine artistry in scientific inquiry and philosophic speculation, a thinker proceeds neither by rule nor yet blindly, but by means of meaning that exist immediately as feelings having qualitative color."

Even the eye that is artificially trained to see color as color, apart from things that colors qualify, cannot shut out the resonances and transfers of value. Pg 126

So we are always esthetically disappointed when the sensuous qualities and the intellectual properties of an object do not coalesce. 7

“Relation” in its idiomatic usage denotes something direct and active, something dynamic and energetic. It fixes attention upon the way things bear upon one another, their clashings and unitings, the way they fulfill and frustrate, promote and retard, excite and inhibit one another. Intellectual relations subsist in propositions; they state the connection of terms with one another. In art, as in nature and in life, relations are modes of interaction. 139

Art expresses, it does not state; it is concerned with existences in their perceived qualities, not with conceptions symbolized in terms. 139

Matisse has described the actual process of painting in the following way: “if, on a clean canvas, i put interval patches of blue, green and red, with every touch that I put on, each of those previously laid on loses in importance. Say I have to paint an interior; I see before me a wardrobe. It gives me a vivid sensation of red; I put on the canvas the particular res that satisfies me. A relation is now established between this red and the paleness of the canvas. When I put on besides a green, and also a yellow to represent the floor, between this green and yellow and the color of the canvas there will be still further relations. But these different tones diminish one another. It is necessary that the different tones I use be balances in such a way that they do not destroy one another. To secure that, I have to out my ideas in order; the relationships between tones must be instituted in such a way that they are built up instead of being knocked down. A new combination of colors will succeed to the first one and will give the wholeness of my conception.” 141-142

Form may then be defined as the operation of forces that carry the experience of an event, object, scene, and situation to its own integral fulfillment.

There can be no movement toward a consummating close unless there is a progressive massing of values, a cumulative effect. This result cannot exist without conservation of the import of what has gone before. Moreover, to secure the needed continuity, the accumulated experience must be such as to create suspense and anticipation of resolution. Accumulation is at the same time preparation, as with each phase of the growth of a living embryo. Only that is carried on which is led to; otherwise there is arrest and a break. For this reason consummation is relative; instead of occurring once for all at a given point, it is recurrent. The final end is anticipated by rhythmic pauses, while that end is final only in an external way. For as we turn from reading a poem or novel or seeing a picture the effect presses forward in further experiences, even if only subconsciously. 143

What happens in the movement of art is emergence of new materials of experience demanding expression, and therefore involving in their expression new forms and techniques. 148

Well both original seizure and subsequent critical discrimination have equal claims, each to its own complete development and must not be forgotten that direct and unreasoned impression comes first. There is such occasions something of the quality of the wind that bloweth where it listeth. Sometimes it comes and sometimes it does not, even in the presence of the same object. It cannot be forced and when it does not arrive it is not wise to seek to recover by direct action the first fine rapture. 151

Naturalism is a word of many meetings in philosophy as well as in art. like most isms — classicism and romanticism, idealism and realism in art — it’s has become an emotional term, a war cry of partisans. 157

Because rhythm is a universal scheme of existence, underlying all realization of order in change, it pervades all the arts, literary, musical, plastic and architectural, as well as the dance. Since man succeeds only as he adapts his behavior to the order of nature, his achievements and victories, as they ensue upon resistance and struggle, become the matrix of all esthetic subject-matter; in some sense they constitute the common pattern of art, the ultimate conditions of form. Their cumulative orders of succession become without express intent the means by which man commemorates and celebrates the most intense and full moments of his experience. Underneath the rhythm of every art and every work of art there lies, as a substratum in the depths of the subconsciousness, the basic pattern of the relations of the live creature to his environment. 156

The true antithesis of nature is not art but arbitrary conceit, fantasy, and stereotyped convention. 158

Equally there is no rhythm when variations are not placed. There is a wealth of suggestions in the phrase “takes place”. The change not only comes but it belongs; it had its definite place in a larger whole. 160

In most cases the esthetic objection to doses of morals and of economic or political propaganda in works of art will be found upon analysis to reside in the over-weighing of certain values at the expense of others until, except for those in a similar stare of one-sides enthusiasm, weariness rather than refreshment sets in. 188

Because energy is not restrained by other elements that are at once antagonistic and cooperative, action proceeds by jerks and spasms. There is discontinuity. 189

No work of art can be instantaneously perceived because there is the no opportunity for conservation and increase in tension, and hence none for that release and unfolding which gives volume to a work of art. 189

Interest only becomes one-sided and morbid only when it ceases to be frank, and becomes sly and furtive. 197

Artist and perceiver alike begin with what may be called a total seizure, an inclusive qualitative whole not yet articulated, not distinguished into members. 199

Even at the outset, the total and massive quality has its uniqueness; even when vague and undefined, it is just that which it is and not anything else. If the perception continues, discrimination inevitably sets in. Attention must move, and as it moves, parts, members, emerge from the background. And if attention moves in a unified direction instead of wandering, it is controlled by the pervading qualitative unity; attention is controlled by it because it operates within it. 199

Coleridge said that every work of art must have about it something not understood to obtain its full effect. 202

In ordinary visual perception, we see by means of light; we distinguish by means of reflected and refracted colors. But in ordinary perception, this medium of color is mixed, adulterated. While we see, we also hear; we feel pressures, and heat and cold. In a painting, color renders the scene without these alloys and impurities. They are part of the dross that is squeezed out and left behind in an act of intensified expression. The medium becomes color alone, and since color alone must now carry the qualities of movement, touch, sound, etc., that are present physically on their own account in ordinary vision, the expressiveness and energy of color are enhanced. 203

There are two kinds of means. One kind is external to that which is accomplished; the other kind is taken up into the consequences and remains immanent in them. There are ends which are merely welcome cessations and there are ends that are fulfillments of what went before. The toil of the laborer is too often an antecedent to the wage he receives, as consumption of gasoline is merely a means to transportation. The means cease to act when the “end” is reached; one would be glad, as a rule, to get the result without having to employ the means. They are but the scaffolding.

Such external or mere means, as we properly term them, are usually of such a sort that others can be substituted for them; the particular ones employed are determined by some extraneous consideration, like cheapness. But the moment we say “media”, we refer to means that are incorporated in the outcome. Even bricks and mortar become part of the house they are employed to build; they are not mere means to its erection. Colors are the painting; tones are the music. A picture painted with water colors has a quality different from that painted with oil. Esthetic effects belong intrinsically to their medium; when another medium is substituted, we have a stunt rather than an object of art. Even when substitution is practiced with the utmost virtuosity or for any reason outside the kind of end desired, the product is mechanical or a tawdry sham — like boards painted to resemble stone in the construction of a cathedral, for stone is integral not just physically, but to the esthetic effect. 204-205

All the cases in which means and ends are external to one another are non-esthetic. 205

In all ranges of experience, externality of means defines the mechanical. 206

The color is of the object and the object in all its qualities is expressed through color. For it is objects that glows— gems and sunlight; and it is objects that are splendid— crowns, robes, sunlight. Except as they express objects, through being the significant color-quality of materials of ordinary experience, colors effect only transient excitations. 212

To look at a work of art in order to see how well certain rules are observed and canons conformed to impoverished perception. But to strive to note the ways in which certain conditions are fulfilled, such as the organic means by which the media is made to express and carry definite parts, or how the problem of adequate individualization is solved, sharpens esthetic perception and enriches its content. 213

Movement in direct experience is alteration in the qualities of objects, and space as experienced is an aspect of this qualitative change. Up and down, back and front, to and fro, this side and that- or right and left- here and there, feel differently. The reason they do is that they are not static points in something itself static, but objects in movement, qualitative changes of value. For “back” is short for backwards and front for forwards. So with velocity. Mathematically there are no such things as fast and slow. They mark simply greater and less on a number scale. As experienced they are qualitatively as unlike as noise and silence, heat and cold, black and white. To be forced to wait a long time for an important event to happen is a length very different from that measured by the movements of the hands of a clock. It is something qualitative.

There is another significant involution of time and movement in space. It is constituted not only by directional tendencies—up and down for example—but by mutual approaches and retreatings. Near and far, close and distant, are qualities of pregnant, often tragic, import—that is, as they are experienced, not just stated by measurement of science. They signify loosening and tightening, expanding and contracting, separating and compacting, soaring and drooping, rising and falling; the dispersive, scattering, and the hovering and brooding, unsubstantial lightness and massive blow. Such actions and reaction are the very stuff out if which the objects and events we experience are made. 215

Works of art express space as opportunity for movement and action. 217

The recurrence of relations—not of elements—in different contexts, which constitutes transposition is qualitative and hence directly experienced in perception. 219

The three qualities of space and time reciprocally affect and qualify one another in experience. Space is inane save as occupied with active volumes. Pauses are holes when they do not accentuate masses and define figures as individuals. Extension sprawls and finally benumbs if it does not interact with place so as to assume intelligible distribution. Mass is nothing fixed. It contracts and expands, asserts and yields, according to its relations to other spatial and enduring things.... these are then the common properties of the matter of arts because there are general conditions without which an experience is not possible. As we saw earlier, the basic condition is felt relationship between doing and undergoing as the organism and environment interact. 220-221

Position expresses the poised readiness of the live creature to meet the impact of surrounding forces, to meet so as to endure and persist, to extend or expand through undergoing the very forces that, apart from its response, are indifferent and hostile. Through going out into the environment, position unfolds into volume; through the pressure of environment, mass is retracted into energy of position, and space remains, when matter is contracted, as an opportunity for further action. 221

Democracy and Education (1916) [ edit ]

Experience and nature (1925) [ edit ].

• A philosophy has no private store of knowledge or methods for attaining truth, so it has no private access to good. As it accepts knowledge and principles from those competent in science and inquiry, it accepts the goods that are diffused in human experience. It has no Mosaic or Pauline authority of revelation entrusted to it. But it has the authority of intelligence, of criticism of these common and natural goods.
• p. 407–8 cited in: Hilary Putnam (2008) "Pragmatism and nonscientific knowledge" James Conant, Urszula M. Zeglen (2012) Hilary Putnam: Pragmatism and Realism . p. 21

How we think (1910) [ edit ]

• "As we shall see later, the most important factor in the training of good mental habits consists in acquiring the attitude of suspended conclusion, and in mastering the various methods of searching for new materials to corroborate or to refute the first suggestions that occur. To maintain the state of doubt and to carry on systematic and protracted inquiry ― these are the essentials of thinking.".
• John Dewey. "What is thought?" Chapter 1 in How we think. Lexington, Mass: D.C. Heath, (1910): 1-13. [1]

Logic: Theory of Inquiry (1938) [ edit ]

• “The Pattern of Inquiry” from Logic: Theory of Inquiry

Time and Individuality (1940) [ edit ]

• ...classic philosophy maintained that change, and consequently time, are marks of inferior reality, holding that true and ultimate reality is immutable and eternal. Human reasons, all too human, have given birth to the idea that over and beyond the lower realm of things that shift like the sands on the seashore there is the kingdom of the unchanging, of the complete, the perfect. The grounds for the belief are couched in the technical language of philosophy, but the grounds for the cause is the heart's desire for surcease from change, struggle, and uncertainty. The eternal and immutable is the consummation of mortal man's quest for certainty.
• The rise of new science in the seventeenth century laid hold upon general culture in the next century. The enlightenment... testified to the widespread belief that at last light had dawned, that dissipation of ignorance, superstition, and bigotry was at hand, and the triumph of reason was assured -- for reason was counterpart in man of the laws of nature which science was disclosing. The reign of law in the natural world was to be followed by the reign of law in human affairs.
• In the late eighteenth and the greater part of the nineteenth centuries appeared the first marked cultural shift in the attitude taken toward change. Under the names of indefinite perfectibility, progress, and evolution, the movement of things in the universe itself and of the universe as a whole began to take on a beneficent instead of hateful aspect.
• This new philosophy, however, was far from giving the temporal an inherent position and function in the constitution of things. Change was acting on the side of man but only because of fixed laws which governed the changes that take place. There was hope in change just because the laws that govern it do not change.
• Not til the late nineteenth century was the doctrine of the subordination of time and change seriously challenged. Bergson and William James , animated by different motives and proceeding by different methods, then installed change at the very heart of things. Bergson took his stand on the primacy of life and consciousness, which are notoriously in a state of flux. He assimilated that which is completely real in the natural world to them, conceiving the static as that which life leaves behind as a deposit as it moves on. From this point of view he criticized mechanistic and teleological theories on the ground that both are guilty of the same error, although from opposite points. Fixed laws which govern change and fixed ends toward which changes tend are both the products of a backward look, one that ignores the forward movement of life. They apply only to that which life has produced and has then left behind in its ongoing vital creative course, a course whose behavior and outcome are unpredictable both mechanistically and from the standpoint of ends.
• The intellect is at home in that which is fixed only because it is done and over with, for intellect is itself just as much a deposit of past life as is the matter to which it is congenial. Intuition alone articulates in the forward thrust of life and alone lays hold of reality.
• The animating purpose of James was, on the other hand, primarily moral and artistic. It is expressed in his phrase, "block universe," employed as a term of adverse criticism. Mechanism and idealism were abhorrent to him because they both hold to a closed universe in which there is no room for novelty and adventure. Both sacrifice individuality and all the values, moral and aesthetic, which hang upon individuality; for according to absolute idealism, as to mechanistic materialism, the individual is simply a part determined by the whole of which he is a part. Only a philosophy of pluralism, of genuine indetermination, and of change which is real and intrinsic gives significance to individuality. It alone justifies struggle in creative activity and gives opportunity for the emergence of the genuinely new.
• When we come to inanimate elements, the prevailing view has been that time and sequential change are entirely foreign to their nature. According to this view they do not have careers; they simply change their relations is space. We have only to think of the classic conception of atoms. The Newtonian atom, for example, moved and was moved, thus changing its position in space, but it was unchangeable in its own being. ...In itself it was like a God, the same yesterday, today, and forever.
• The discovery that mass changes with velocity, a discovery made when minute bodies came under consideration, finally forced surrender of the notion that mass is a fixed and inalienable possession of ultimate elements or individuals, so that time is now considered to be their fourth dimension.
• It may be remarked incidentally that the recognition of the relational character of scientific objects completely eliminates an old metaphysical issue. One of the outstanding problems created by the rise of modern science was due to the fact that scientific definitions and descriptions are framed in terms of which qualities play no part. Qualities were wholly superfluous. As long as the idea persisted (an inheritance from Greek metaphysical science) that the business of knowledge is to penetrate into the inner being of objects, the existence of qualities like colors, sounds, etc., was embarrassing. The usual way of dealing with them is to declare that they are merely subjective, existing only in the consciousness of individual knowers. Given the old idea that the purpose of knowledge (represented at its best in science) is to penetrate into the heart of reality and reveal its "true" nature, the conclusion was a logical one. ...The discovery of the nonscientific because of the empirically unverifiable and unnecessary character of absolute space, absolute motion, and absolute time gave the final coup de grâce to the traditional idea that solidity, mass, size, etc., are inherent possessions of ultimate individuals.
• The revolution in scientific ideas just mentioned is primarily logical. It is due to recognition that the very method of physical science, with its primary standard units of mass, space, and time, is concerned with measurements of relations of change, not with individuals as such.
• This idea is that laws which purport to be statements of what actually occurs are statistical in character as distinct from so-called dynamic laws that are abstract and mathematical, and disguised definitions. Recognition of the statistical nature of physical laws was first effected in the case of gases when it became evident that generalizations regarding the behavior of swarms of molecules were not descriptions or predictions of the behavior of any individual particle. A single molecule is not and cannot be a gas. It is consequently absurd to suppose that a scientific law is about the elementary constituents of a gas. It is a statement of what happens when a large number of such constituents interact with one another under certain conditions.
• The application of scientific formulations of the principle of probability statistically determined is thus a logical corollary of the principle already stated, that the subject matter of scientific findings is relational, not individual. It is for this reason that it is safe to predict the ultimate triumph of the statistical doctrine.
• Classical science was based upon the belief that it is possible to formulate both the position and velocity at one time of any given particle. It followed that knowledge of the position and velocity of a given number of particles would enable the future behavior of the whole collection to be accurately predicted. The principle of Heisenberg is that given the determination of position, its velocity can be stated only as of a certain order of probability, while if its velocity is determined the correlative factor of position can be stated only as of a certain order of probability. Both cannot be determined at once, from which it follows necessarily that the future of the whole collection cannot possibly be foretold except in terms of some order of probability.
• The utmost possible regarding an individual is a statement as to some order of probability about the future. Heisenberg's principle has been seized upon as a basis for wild statements to the effect that the doctrine of arbitrary free will and totally uncaused activity are now scientifically substantiated. Its actual force and significance is generalization of the idea that the individual is a temporal career whose future cannot logically be deduced from its past.
• Individuality, conceived as a temporal development involves uncertainty, indeterminacy, or contingency. Individuality is the source of whatever is unpredictable in the world.
• But the individual butterfly or earthquake remains just the unique existence which it is. We forget in explaining its occurrence that it is only the occurrence that is explained, not the thing itself.
• The mystery is that the world is at it is -- a mystery that is the source of all joy and all sorrow, of all hope and fear, and the source of development both creative and degenerative. The contingency of all into which time enters is the source of pathos, comedy, and tragedy.
• Genuine time, if it exists as anything else except the measure of motions in space, is all one with the existence of individuals as individuals, with the creative, with the occurrence of unpredictable novelties. Everything that can be said contrary to this conclusion is but a reminder that an individual may lose his individuality, for individuals become imprisoned in routine and fall to the level of mechanisms. Genuine time then ceases to be an integral element of their being. Our behavior becomes predictable, because it is but an external rearrangement of what went before.
• Surrender of individuality by the many to someone who is taken to be a superindividual explains the retrograde movement of society. Dictatorships and totalitarian states, and belief in the inevitability of this or that result coming to pass are, strange as it may sound, ways of denying the reality of time and the creativeness of the individual.
• Freedom of thought and of expression are not mere rights to be claimed. They have their roots deep in the existence of individuals as developing careers in time. Their denial and abrogation is an abdication of individuality and a virtual rejection of time as opportunity.
• The ground of democratic ideas and practices is faith in the potentialities of individuals, faith in the capacity for positive developments if proper conditions are provided. The weakness of the philosophy originally advanced to justify the democratic movement was that it took individuality to be something given ready-made, that is, in abstraction from time, instead of as a power to develop.
• The other conclusion is that art is the complement of science. Science as I have said is concerned wholly with relations, not with individuals. Art, on the other hand, is not only the disclosure of the individuality of the artist but also a manifestation of individuality as creative of the future, in an unprecedented response to conditions as they were in the past. Some artists in their vision of what might be, but is not, have been conscious rebels. But conscious protest and revolt is not the form which the labor of the artist in creation of the future must necessarily take. Discontent with things as they are is normally the expression of the vision of what may be and is not, art in being the manifestation of individuality is this prophetic vision.
• To regiment artists, to make them servants of some particular cause does violence to the very springs of artistic creation. But it does more than that. It betrays the very cause of a better future it would serve, for in its subjugation of the individuality of the artist it annihilates the source of that which is genuinely new. Where the regimentation is successful, it would cause the future to be but a rearrangement of the past.
• The artist in realizing his own individuality reveals potentialities hitherto unrealized. The revelation is the inspiration of other individuals to make the potentialities real, for it is not sheer revolt against things as they are which stirs human endeavor to its depth, but vision of what might be and is not. Subordination of the artists to any special cause no matter how worthy does violence not only to the artist but to the living source of a new and better future.
• Art is not the possession of the few who are recognized writers, painters, musicians; it is the authentic expression of any and all individuality. Those who have the gift of creative expression in unusually large measure disclose the meaning of the individuality of others to those others. In participating in the work of art, they become artists in their activity. They learn to know and honor individuality in whatever form it appears. The fountains of creative activity are discovered and released. The free individuality which is the source of art is also the final source of creative development in time.

Misattributed [ edit ]

• James Hinton , Philosophy and Religion: Selections from the Manuscripts of the Late James Hinton , ed. Caroline Haddon, (2nd ed., London: 1884), p. 267 .
• Widely misattributed on the internet to Dewey, who actually attributes it to Hinton in Human Nature and Conduct: An Introduction to Social Psychology (New York: 1922), p. 115 .
• This is a paraphrase of an idea that Dewey expressed using other words in My Pedagogic Creed (1897) and Democracy and Education (1916); it is widely misattributed to Dewey as a quotation.
• Cf. James William Norman, A Comparison of Tendencies in Secondary Education in England and the United States (New York: Teachers College, Columbia University, 1922), p. 140 (emphasis added): "...there has for years been a strong and growing tendency in the United States under the leadership of Dewey, and more recently of Kilpatrick, to find an educational method correlative of democracy in society with the belief that education is life itself rather than a mere preparation for life , and that practice in democratic living is the best preparation for democracy."
• This text is commentary (not a quotation of Dewey) that was added to this page at 05:36, 2 February 2009 (UTC) ; the text was later removed from this page but not before being misattributed to Dewey on several web sites, including in a sermon given at an Episcopal church . The statement was commenting on a quotation from Democracy and Education (1916): "The first step in freeing men from external chains was to emancipate them from the internal chains of false beliefs and ideals."

Quotes about John Dewey [ edit ]

• Jane Addams , 20 Years at Hull House (1910)
• Kenneth Arrow , "Invaluable Goods", Journal of Economic Literature , Vol. 35, No. 2 (Jun., 1997)

In [Dewey's] thought the hope of achieving a vantage point which transcends the corruptions of self-interest takes the form of trusting ... "the procedure of organized co-operative inquiry which has won the triumphs of science in the field of physical nature." ...

Not a suspicion dawns on Professor Dewey that no possible "organized inquiry" can be as transcendent over historical conflicts of interest as it ought to be to achieve the disinterested intelligence he attributes to it. Every such "organized inquiry" must have its own particular social locus. No court of law, thought supported by age-old traditions of freedom from party conflict, is free of party bias whenever it deals with issues profound enough to touch the very foundations of the society upon which the court is reared.

• Reinhold Niebuhr , The Nature and Destiny of Man (1941), vol. 1, pp. 110-111.
• Robert B. Talisse, "Pragmatism and Political Theory", in Routledge International Handbook of Contemporary Social and Political Theory , edited by Gerard Delanty and Stephen P. Turner (2011)

External links [ edit ]

• John Dewey at Project Gutenberg

• Academics from the United States
• Philosophers from the United States
• Psychologists from the United States
• Presidents of the American Psychological Association
• Educators from the United States
• Logicians from the United States
• Cultural critics
• Social critics
• Critics from the United States
• Non-fiction authors from the United States
• 1859 births
• 1952 deaths
• Atheists from the United States
• Socialists from the United States
• People from Vermont
• Columbia University faculty

Navigation menu

The Lean Post / Articles / Why Effective Problem Solving Begins With a Good Problem Statement

Problem Solving

Why Effective Problem Solving Begins With a Good Problem Statement

By Dave LaHote

January 7, 2015

"Let’s solve world peace" or "let’s state our predetermined solution as a problem" aren't real problem statements, says Dave LaHote. Read why a good problem statement is so important, why it's harder than you think to come up with one, and learn how to write a better one.

“Hey everybody, let’s ‘ A3 ’!”   

Let’s solve world peace or let’s state our predetermined solution as a problem, as in “we need to develop a problem solving culture” or “the problem is we need the new software upgrade.” These are two of the most common issues I see.  

A problem well-stated is a problem half-solved. Charles Kettering, Head of Research at General Motors from 1920-1947. 

Everyone is doing it and certainly no other tool in the lean toolbox epitomizes the scientific method or PDCA way of thinking more than A3 for problem solving. We know that a problem solving A3 is a representation of the A3 thinking process applied to a specific problem. My observation from decades of doing A3s is that one of the biggest challenges in A3 thinking is deciding exactly what the problem is that we are trying to solve and boiling that problem down to a good problem statement.

Another is a problem statement that is so broad that it can’t be reasonably measured or observed, as in “we have too many errors in our patient record files.” A good problem statement in its simplest form is a clear statement of the difference between our target condition and our actual condition stated in observable and measureable terms. For example, something like “30% of patient immunization records are missing at least one entry” or better, narrower, and more specific yet: “10% of patient immunization records are missing the date of birth.”

The smaller the scope and the more specific the description of the gap between current and target/standard, the easier it will be to get to root cause and solve the problem. Getting from the broad and unspecific “we have too many errors in our patient records” to the more specific “10% of patient immunization records are missing the date of birth” allows us to get to the root cause of why DOB is missing. This helps us implement a countermeasure to that specific root cause and run the experiment to see if it works (remember, nothing ever goes according to plan) and then adjust based on what we learn. Eliminating the 10% DOB omission problem helps us to make progress against the broader issue of omissions and errors in patient records.

So, what’s the take away from all of this? When we write our problem statements, let’s try to be more specific. In my years of problem solving I don’t ever remember anyone complaining that we were working on a problem that had been scoped too narrowly. If you’re feeling stuck, try to think: What is the current condition versus the target or standard in observable and measureable terms? Get the problem stated well and you’ll have it half solved. State your problem in such a way that your team members can understand and articulate it in the same terms, and you may be three quarters of the way there.

What difficulties do you experience in creating problem statements?

Managing to Learn

An Introduction to A3 Leadership and Problem-Solving.

Written by:

About Dave LaHote

Dave LaHote is a retired senior executive who is currently an educator and advisor to organizations making the lean leap. From 2006 to 2011, Dave served as the president, Lean Education, for the Lean Enterprise Institute in Cambridge, MA. Dave came to LEI with over 35 years of experience in…

A well written article, very often we are too candid about how we approach problem solving. A problem well states is a problem (almost) solved.

Leave a Comment Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

Revolutionizing Logistics: DHL eCommerce’s Journey Applying Lean Thinking to Automation  

Podcast by Matthew Savas

Transforming Corporate Culture: Bestbath’s Approach to Scaling Problem-Solving Capability

Building a Problem-Solving Culture: Insights from Barton Malow’s Lean University

Related books

A3 Getting Started Guide

by Lean Enterprise Institute

The Power of Process – A Story of Innovative Lean Process Development

by Eric Ethington and Matt Zayko

Related events

April 08, 2024 | Coach-Led Online Course

April 16, 2024 | Coach-Led Online Course

Improvement Kata/Coaching Kata

Explore topics.

Privacy Overview

A Problem Well-stated is Half-solved

Here, then, are six steps you can take to state a business problem so its solutions become clearer:

1. State the problem in a sentence . A single sentence forces you to extract the main problem from a potentially complex situation. An example of a problem statement: “We need to increase revenue by 25%.”

2. Make the problem statement into a question. Turning the problem statement into a question opens the mind to possibilities: “How do we increase revenue by 25%?”

3. Restate the question in five ways. If you spin the question from a variety of perspectives, you’ll construct new questions that may provide intriguing answers.

For instance, try asking: “How could we increase revenue by 25% in a month?” “How could we increase it by 25% in an hour?” “How could we increase it by 25% in a minute?” “What could we stop doing that might cause a 25% revenue increase?” “What ways can we use our existing customer base to affect the increase?”

4. Give yourself thinking quotas . An arbitrary production quota gives you a better shot at coming up with something usable, because it keeps you thinking longer and with greater concentration.

When I asked you to “Restate the question five ways,” that was an example of an arbitrary quota. There’s nothing magical about five restatements. In fact, five is low. Ten, or even a hundred, would be far better.

5. Knock your questions . Whatever questions you’ve asked, assume they’re wrong-headed, or that you haven’t taken them far enough.

You might ask, “Why do we need an 25% increase at all? Why not a 5% increase? A 500% increase? A 5,000% increase? What other things in the business might need to change that would be as important as revenue?

6. Decide upon your new problem-solving question. Based on the thinking you’ve already done, this step may not even be necessary. Often, when you look at your situation from enough angles, solutions pop up without much more effort.

However, if you still need to pick a single question that summarizes your problem, and none seems perfect, force yourself to choose one that’s at least serviceable. Going forward is better than standing still.

Now you can start brainstorming.

• Share This Post:
• Bookmark on Delicious
• Digg this post
• Recommend on Facebook
• share via Reddit
• Share with Stumblers
• Tweet about it
• Subscribe to the comments on this post
• Tell a friend

Leave a Comment Cancel Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

CAPTCHA Code *

Saturday, May 26, 2018

• Labels: Project Success

Understanding Your Problem Is Half the Solution (Actually the Most Important Half)

“Everything Should Be Made as Simple as Possible, But Not Simpler” – Albert Einstein

“Given one hour to save the world, I would spend 55 minutes defining the problem and 5 minutes finding the solution.” - Albert Einstein

“It's so much easier to suggest solutions when you don't know too much about the problem.” - Malcolm Forbes

“We fail more often because we solve the wrong problem than because we get the wrong solution to the right problem.” – Russell L. Ackoff

If you need some guidance on how to define your problem and your project success criteria have a look at my  Project Success Model and Project Success Definition Workshop .

Share Episode:

A Problem Well-Stated Is Half-Solved with Daniel Schmachtenberger

We’ve explored many different problems on Your Undivided Attention — addiction, disinformation, polarization, climate change, and more. But what if many of these problems are actually symptoms of the same meta-problem, or meta-crisis? And what if a key leverage point for intervening in this meta-crisis is improving our collective capacity to problem-solve?

Our guest Daniel Schmachtenberger guides us through his vision for a new form of global coordination to help us address our global existential challenges. Daniel is a founding member of the Consilience Project , aimed at facilitating new forms of collective intelligence and governance to strengthen open societies. He's also a friend and mentor of Tristan Harris. 

This insight-packed episode introduces key frames we look forward to using in future episodes. For this reason, we highly encourage you to listen to this edited version along with the unedited version .

We also invite you to join Daniel and Tristan at our Podcast Club! It will be on Friday, July 9th from 2-3:30pm PDT / 5-6:30pm EDT. Check here for details.

Daniel Schmachtenberger

Daniel is a founding member of The Consilience Project, aimed at improving public sensemaking and dialogue. The throughline of his interests has to do with ways of improving the health and development of individuals and society, with a virtuous relationship between the two as a goal. Towards these ends, he’s had particular interest in the topics of catastrophic and existential risk, civilization and institutional decay and collapse as well as progress, collective action problems, social organization theories, and the relevant domains in philosophy and science. Motivated by the belief that advancing collective intelligence and capacity is foundational to the integrity of any civilization, and necessary to address the unique risks we currently face given the intersection of globalization and exponential technology, he has spoken publicly on many of these topics, hoping to popularize and deepen important conversations and engage more people in working towards their solutions. Many of these can be found at http://civilizationemerging.com/media/ ‍

For more information about The Consilience Project at https://consilienceproject.org/

Episode Highlights

Major takeaways.

• Many of the problems we face are interrelated, and can therefore be thought of as a meta-problem or meta-crisis . On one hand, if we try to solve problems without accounting for their inter-relatedness, we may create bigger, longer-term problems. For example, if we try to address elephant poaching without accounting for hunger, we may push people to poach even more endangered species, or if we address misinformation through fact-checking, we may exacerbate polarization. On the other hand, if we approach problems in a way that does account for their inter-relatedness, we can solve many problems at once. ‍
• Daniel talks about generator functions of existential risk — underlying forces that drive many of the problems we face today. Specifically, he outlines three generator functions of existential risk: 
• ~rivalrous dynamics, manifested by arms races and tragedy of the commons, 
• ~the subsuming of our substrate, from the degradation of our biosphere to the degradation of our attention, and 
• ~exponential technology, or technology that exponentially makes better versions of itself.  ‍
• Daniel says that any civilization that doesn't address these three generator functions will inexorably self-terminate.  ‍
• Before World War II, risk was locally existential , because individual societies could collapse without affecting other societies. After WWII and with the development of the atomic bomb, risk became globally existential , because it became possible to extinguish all of human civilization. In order to manage global existential risk, the superpowers aligned on what Daniel might call the Bretton Woods order — which included the Bretton Woods agreements, the United Nations, and mutually-assured destruction. Today, with multiple nuclear countries, non-state actors bearing other catastrophe weapons, and humanity hitting planetary boundaries, we have unmanaged global existential risk. Daniel argues that we need a new form of global coordination in order to manage global existential risk.
• In the vacuum of what Daniel sees as a failure of our institutions to manage global existential risk, he sees two attractors — two states that we're naturally gravitating towards. Those two attractors are: oppression and chaos. Oppression is characterized by China's model of digital authoritarianism, where the state uses its power to limit the freedom of citizens, while chaos is characterized by regulatory failure in the West, where the state often fails to be an effective check on the market.  Daniel argues that we need a third attractor — a force that can manage global existential existential risk without devolving into oppression or chaos. He makes the case that this third attractor must be the people, comprehensively educated and enabled by humane technology. Ultimately, Daniel is calling for a new cultural Enlightenment, that has the emergent wisdom to manage global existential risk and realize a more protopic world.

Take Action

Share these ideas, recommended media, [unedited] a problem well-stated is half-solved.

Generator functions of existential risk? Exponential technology? Epistemic capacity? This episode is packed with insightful frames, which we’ll be starting to use in future episodes. So, along with the edited version of this episode, we highly recommend listening to the unedited version.

The Consilience Project :

The Consilience Project is developing a body of social theory and analysis that explains and seeks solutions to the unique challenges we face today. It focuses on the deeper generator functions beneath the world’s major problems, drawing on the best of social theory while showing where existing theories and institutions are no longer adequate to fix the current problem landscape. The aim of the project is to help catalyze a cultural enlightenment that will develop a new set of shared values and capacities adequate to the needs of our time.

Democracy and the Epistemic Commons :

This is a featured article from The Consilience Project. It makes the case that democracy cannot function without an epistemically healthy public sphere, and that only a new movement for cultural enlightenment can reboot our ailing institutions, create new ones, and ultimately restore our democracy.

Recommended Episodes

Stay in Touch

Subscribe to our newsletter, The Catalyst, to receive our latest thinking and resources on redesigning the technology ecosystem. Our periodic emails are designed to respect your attention.

• SUGGESTED TOPICS
• The Magazine
• Newsletters
• Managing Yourself
• Managing Teams
• Work-life Balance
• The Big Idea
• Data & Visuals
• Reading Lists
• Case Selections
• HBR Learning
• Topic Feeds
• Account Settings
• Email Preferences

Share Podcast

Do You Understand the Problem You’re Trying to Solve?

To solve tough problems at work, first ask these questions.

• Apple Podcasts
• Google Podcasts

Problem solving skills are invaluable in any job. But all too often, we jump to find solutions to a problem without taking time to really understand the dilemma we face, according to Thomas Wedell-Wedellsborg , an expert in innovation and the author of the book, What’s Your Problem?: To Solve Your Toughest Problems, Change the Problems You Solve .

In this episode, you’ll learn how to reframe tough problems by asking questions that reveal all the factors and assumptions that contribute to the situation. You’ll also learn why searching for just one root cause can be misleading.

Key episode topics include: leadership, decision making and problem solving, power and influence, business management.

HBR On Leadership curates the best case studies and conversations with the world’s top business and management experts, to help you unlock the best in those around you. New episodes every week.

• Listen to the original HBR IdeaCast episode: The Secret to Better Problem Solving (2016)
• Find more episodes of HBR IdeaCast
• Discover 100 years of Harvard Business Review articles, case studies, podcasts, and more at HBR.org .

HANNAH BATES: Welcome to HBR on Leadership , case studies and conversations with the world’s top business and management experts, hand-selected to help you unlock the best in those around you.

Problem solving skills are invaluable in any job. But even the most experienced among us can fall into the trap of solving the wrong problem.

Thomas Wedell-Wedellsborg says that all too often, we jump to find solutions to a problem – without taking time to really understand what we’re facing.

He’s an expert in innovation, and he’s the author of the book, What’s Your Problem?: To Solve Your Toughest Problems, Change the Problems You Solve .

  In this episode, you’ll learn how to reframe tough problems, by asking questions that reveal all the factors and assumptions that contribute to the situation. You’ll also learn why searching for one root cause can be misleading. And you’ll learn how to use experimentation and rapid prototyping as problem-solving tools.

This episode originally aired on HBR IdeaCast in December 2016. Here it is.

SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: Welcome to the HBR IdeaCast from Harvard Business Review. I’m Sarah Green Carmichael.

Problem solving is popular. People put it on their resumes. Managers believe they excel at it. Companies count it as a key proficiency. We solve customers’ problems.

The problem is we often solve the wrong problems. Albert Einstein and Peter Drucker alike have discussed the difficulty of effective diagnosis. There are great frameworks for getting teams to attack true problems, but they’re often hard to do daily and on the fly. That’s where our guest comes in.

Thomas Wedell-Wedellsborg is a consultant who helps companies and managers reframe their problems so they can come up with an effective solution faster. He asks the question “Are You Solving The Right Problems?” in the January-February 2017 issue of Harvard Business Review. Thomas, thank you so much for coming on the HBR IdeaCast .

THOMAS WEDELL-WEDELLSBORG: Thanks for inviting me.

SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: So, I thought maybe we could start by talking about the problem of talking about problem reframing. What is that exactly?

THOMAS WEDELL-WEDELLSBORG: Basically, when people face a problem, they tend to jump into solution mode to rapidly, and very often that means that they don’t really understand, necessarily, the problem they’re trying to solve. And so, reframing is really a– at heart, it’s a method that helps you avoid that by taking a second to go in and ask two questions, basically saying, first of all, wait. What is the problem we’re trying to solve? And then crucially asking, is there a different way to think about what the problem actually is?

SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: So, I feel like so often when this comes up in meetings, you know, someone says that, and maybe they throw out the Einstein quote about you spend an hour of problem solving, you spend 55 minutes to find the problem. And then everyone else in the room kind of gets irritated. So, maybe just give us an example of maybe how this would work in practice in a way that would not, sort of, set people’s teeth on edge, like oh, here Sarah goes again, reframing the whole problem instead of just solving it.

THOMAS WEDELL-WEDELLSBORG: I mean, you’re bringing up something that’s, I think is crucial, which is to create legitimacy for the method. So, one of the reasons why I put out the article is to give people a tool to say actually, this thing is still important, and we need to do it. But I think the really critical thing in order to make this work in a meeting is actually to learn how to do it fast, because if you have the idea that you need to spend 30 minutes in a meeting delving deeply into the problem, I mean, that’s going to be uphill for most problems. So, the critical thing here is really to try to make it a practice you can implement very, very rapidly.

There’s an example that I would suggest memorizing. This is the example that I use to explain very rapidly what it is. And it’s basically, I call it the slow elevator problem. You imagine that you are the owner of an office building, and that your tenants are complaining that the elevator’s slow.

Now, if you take that problem framing for granted, you’re going to start thinking creatively around how do we make the elevator faster. Do we install a new motor? Do we have to buy a new lift somewhere?

The thing is, though, if you ask people who actually work with facilities management, well, they’re going to have a different solution for you, which is put up a mirror next to the elevator. That’s what happens is, of course, that people go oh, I’m busy. I’m busy. I’m– oh, a mirror. Oh, that’s beautiful.

And then they forget time. What’s interesting about that example is that the idea with a mirror is actually a solution to a different problem than the one you first proposed. And so, the whole idea here is once you get good at using reframing, you can quickly identify other aspects of the problem that might be much better to try to solve than the original one you found. It’s not necessarily that the first one is wrong. It’s just that there might be better problems out there to attack that we can, means we can do things much faster, cheaper, or better.

SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: So, in that example, I can understand how A, it’s probably expensive to make the elevator faster, so it’s much cheaper just to put up a mirror. And B, maybe the real problem people are actually feeling, even though they’re not articulating it right, is like, I hate waiting for the elevator. But if you let them sort of fix their hair or check their teeth, they’re suddenly distracted and don’t notice.

But if you have, this is sort of a pedestrian example, but say you have a roommate or a spouse who doesn’t clean up the kitchen. Facing that problem and not having your elegant solution already there to highlight the contrast between the perceived problem and the real problem, how would you take a problem like that and attack it using this method so that you can see what some of the other options might be?

THOMAS WEDELL-WEDELLSBORG: Right. So, I mean, let’s say it’s you who have that problem. I would go in and say, first of all, what would you say the problem is? Like, if you were to describe your view of the problem, what would that be?

SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: I hate cleaning the kitchen, and I want someone else to clean it up.

THOMAS WEDELL-WEDELLSBORG: OK. So, my first observation, you know, that somebody else might not necessarily be your spouse. So, already there, there’s an inbuilt assumption in your question around oh, it has to be my husband who does the cleaning. So, it might actually be worth, already there to say, is that really the only problem you have? That you hate cleaning the kitchen, and you want to avoid it? Or might there be something around, as well, getting a better relationship in terms of how you solve problems in general or establishing a better way to handle small problems when dealing with your spouse?

SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: Or maybe, now that I’m thinking that, maybe the problem is that you just can’t find the stuff in the kitchen when you need to find it.

THOMAS WEDELL-WEDELLSBORG: Right, and so that’s an example of a reframing, that actually why is it a problem that the kitchen is not clean? Is it only because you hate the act of cleaning, or does it actually mean that it just takes you a lot longer and gets a lot messier to actually use the kitchen, which is a different problem. The way you describe this problem now, is there anything that’s missing from that description?

SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: That is a really good question.

THOMAS WEDELL-WEDELLSBORG: Other, basically asking other factors that we are not talking about right now, and I say those because people tend to, when given a problem, they tend to delve deeper into the detail. What often is missing is actually an element outside of the initial description of the problem that might be really relevant to what’s going on. Like, why does the kitchen get messy in the first place? Is it something about the way you use it or your cooking habits? Is it because the neighbor’s kids, kind of, use it all the time?

There might, very often, there might be issues that you’re not really thinking about when you first describe the problem that actually has a big effect on it.

SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: I think at this point it would be helpful to maybe get another business example, and I’m wondering if you could tell us the story of the dog adoption problem.

THOMAS WEDELL-WEDELLSBORG: Yeah. This is a big problem in the US. If you work in the shelter industry, basically because dogs are so popular, more than 3 million dogs every year enter a shelter, and currently only about half of those actually find a new home and get adopted. And so, this is a problem that has persisted. It’s been, like, a structural problem for decades in this space. In the last three years, where people found new ways to address it.

So a woman called Lori Weise who runs a rescue organization in South LA, and she actually went in and challenged the very idea of what we were trying to do. She said, no, no. The problem we’re trying to solve is not about how to get more people to adopt dogs. It is about keeping the dogs with their first family so they never enter the shelter system in the first place.

In 2013, she started what’s called a Shelter Intervention Program that basically works like this. If a family comes and wants to hand over their dog, these are called owner surrenders. It’s about 30% of all dogs that come into a shelter. All they would do is go up and ask, if you could, would you like to keep your animal? And if they said yes, they would try to fix whatever helped them fix the problem, but that made them turn over this.

And sometimes that might be that they moved into a new building. The landlord required a deposit, and they simply didn’t have the money to put down a deposit. Or the dog might need a $10 rabies shot, but they didn’t know how to get access to a vet.

And so, by instigating that program, just in the first year, she took her, basically the amount of dollars they spent per animal they helped went from something like $85 down to around $60. Just an immediate impact, and her program now is being rolled out, is being supported by the ASPCA, which is one of the big animal welfare stations, and it’s being rolled out to various other places.

And I think what really struck me with that example was this was not dependent on having the internet. This was not, oh, we needed to have everybody mobile before we could come up with this. This, conceivably, we could have done 20 years ago. Only, it only happened when somebody, like in this case Lori, went in and actually rethought what the problem they were trying to solve was in the first place.

SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: So, what I also think is so interesting about that example is that when you talk about it, it doesn’t sound like the kind of thing that would have been thought of through other kinds of problem solving methods. There wasn’t necessarily an After Action Review or a 5 Whys exercise or a Six Sigma type intervention. I don’t want to throw those other methods under the bus, but how can you get such powerful results with such a very simple way of thinking about something?

THOMAS WEDELL-WEDELLSBORG: That was something that struck me as well. This, in a way, reframing and the idea of the problem diagnosis is important is something we’ve known for a long, long time. And we’ve actually have built some tools to help out. If you worked with us professionally, you are familiar with, like, Six Sigma, TRIZ, and so on. You mentioned 5 Whys. A root cause analysis is another one that a lot of people are familiar with.

Those are our good tools, and they’re definitely better than nothing. But what I notice when I work with the companies applying those was those tools tend to make you dig deeper into the first understanding of the problem we have. If it’s the elevator example, people start asking, well, is that the cable strength, or is the capacity of the elevator? That they kind of get caught by the details.

That, in a way, is a bad way to work on problems because it really assumes that there’s like a, you can almost hear it, a root cause. That you have to dig down and find the one true problem, and everything else was just symptoms. That’s a bad way to think about problems because problems tend to be multicausal.

There tend to be lots of causes or levers you can potentially press to address a problem. And if you think there’s only one, if that’s the right problem, that’s actually a dangerous way. And so I think that’s why, that this is a method I’ve worked with over the last five years, trying to basically refine how to make people better at this, and the key tends to be this thing about shifting out and saying, is there a totally different way of thinking about the problem versus getting too caught up in the mechanistic details of what happens.

SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: What about experimentation? Because that’s another method that’s become really popular with the rise of Lean Startup and lots of other innovation methodologies. Why wouldn’t it have worked to, say, experiment with many different types of fixing the dog adoption problem, and then just pick the one that works the best?

THOMAS WEDELL-WEDELLSBORG: You could say in the dog space, that’s what’s been going on. I mean, there is, in this industry and a lot of, it’s largely volunteer driven. People have experimented, and they found different ways of trying to cope. And that has definitely made the problem better. So, I wouldn’t say that experimentation is bad, quite the contrary. Rapid prototyping, quickly putting something out into the world and learning from it, that’s a fantastic way to learn more and to move forward.

My point is, though, that I feel we’ve come to rely too much on that. There’s like, if you look at the start up space, the wisdom is now just to put something quickly into the market, and then if it doesn’t work, pivot and just do more stuff. What reframing really is, I think of it as the cognitive counterpoint to prototyping. So, this is really a way of seeing very quickly, like not just working on the solution, but also working on our understanding of the problem and trying to see is there a different way to think about that.

If you only stick with experimentation, again, you tend to sometimes stay too much in the same space trying minute variations of something instead of taking a step back and saying, wait a minute. What is this telling us about what the real issue is?

SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: So, to go back to something that we touched on earlier, when we were talking about the completely hypothetical example of a spouse who does not clean the kitchen–

THOMAS WEDELL-WEDELLSBORG: Completely, completely hypothetical.

SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: Yes. For the record, my husband is a great kitchen cleaner.

You started asking me some questions that I could see immediately were helping me rethink that problem. Is that kind of the key, just having a checklist of questions to ask yourself? How do you really start to put this into practice?

THOMAS WEDELL-WEDELLSBORG: I think there are two steps in that. The first one is just to make yourself better at the method. Yes, you should kind of work with a checklist. In the article, I kind of outlined seven practices that you can use to do this.

But importantly, I would say you have to consider that as, basically, a set of training wheels. I think there’s a big, big danger in getting caught in a checklist. This is something I work with.

My co-author Paddy Miller, it’s one of his insights. That if you start giving people a checklist for things like this, they start following it. And that’s actually a problem, because what you really want them to do is start challenging their thinking.

So the way to handle this is to get some practice using it. Do use the checklist initially, but then try to step away from it and try to see if you can organically make– it’s almost a habit of mind. When you run into a colleague in the hallway and she has a problem and you have five minutes, like, delving in and just starting asking some of those questions and using your intuition to say, wait, how is she talking about this problem? And is there a question or two I can ask her about the problem that can help her rethink it?

SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: Well, that is also just a very different approach, because I think in that situation, most of us can’t go 30 seconds without jumping in and offering solutions.

THOMAS WEDELL-WEDELLSBORG: Very true. The drive toward solutions is very strong. And to be clear, I mean, there’s nothing wrong with that if the solutions work. So, many problems are just solved by oh, you know, oh, here’s the way to do that. Great.

But this is really a powerful method for those problems where either it’s something we’ve been banging our heads against tons of times without making progress, or when you need to come up with a really creative solution. When you’re facing a competitor with a much bigger budget, and you know, if you solve the same problem later, you’re not going to win. So, that basic idea of taking that approach to problems can often help you move forward in a different way than just like, oh, I have a solution.

I would say there’s also, there’s some interesting psychological stuff going on, right? Where you may have tried this, but if somebody tries to serve up a solution to a problem I have, I’m often resistant towards them. Kind if like, no, no, no, no, no, no. That solution is not going to work in my world. Whereas if you get them to discuss and analyze what the problem really is, you might actually dig something up.

Let’s go back to the kitchen example. One powerful question is just to say, what’s your own part in creating this problem? It’s very often, like, people, they describe problems as if it’s something that’s inflicted upon them from the external world, and they are innocent bystanders in that.

SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: Right, or crazy customers with unreasonable demands.

THOMAS WEDELL-WEDELLSBORG: Exactly, right. I don’t think I’ve ever met an agency or consultancy that didn’t, like, gossip about their customers. Oh, my god, they’re horrible. That, you know, classic thing, why don’t they want to take more risk? Well, risk is bad.

It’s their business that’s on the line, not the consultancy’s, right? So, absolutely, that’s one of the things when you step into a different mindset and kind of, wait. Oh yeah, maybe I actually am part of creating this problem in a sense, as well. That tends to open some new doors for you to move forward, in a way, with stuff that you may have been struggling with for years.

SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: So, we’ve surfaced a couple of questions that are useful. I’m curious to know, what are some of the other questions that you find yourself asking in these situations, given that you have made this sort of mental habit that you do? What are the questions that people seem to find really useful?

THOMAS WEDELL-WEDELLSBORG: One easy one is just to ask if there are any positive exceptions to the problem. So, was there day where your kitchen was actually spotlessly clean? And then asking, what was different about that day? Like, what happened there that didn’t happen the other days? That can very often point people towards a factor that they hadn’t considered previously.

SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: We got take-out.

THOMAS WEDELL-WEDELLSBORG: S,o that is your solution. Take-out from [INAUDIBLE]. That might have other problems.

Another good question, and this is a little bit more high level. It’s actually more making an observation about labeling how that person thinks about the problem. And what I mean with that is, we have problem categories in our head. So, if I say, let’s say that you describe a problem to me and say, well, we have a really great product and are, it’s much better than our previous product, but people aren’t buying it. I think we need to put more marketing dollars into this.

Now you can go in and say, that’s interesting. This sounds like you’re thinking of this as a communications problem. Is there a different way of thinking about that? Because you can almost tell how, when the second you say communications, there are some ideas about how do you solve a communications problem. Typically with more communication.

And what you might do is go in and suggest, well, have you considered that it might be, say, an incentive problem? Are there incentives on behalf of the purchasing manager at your clients that are obstructing you? Might there be incentive issues with your own sales force that makes them want to sell the old product instead of the new one?

So literally, just identifying what type of problem does this person think about, and is there different potential way of thinking about it? Might it be an emotional problem, a timing problem, an expectations management problem? Thinking about what label of what type of problem that person is kind of thinking as it of.

SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: That’s really interesting, too, because I think so many of us get requests for advice that we’re really not qualified to give. So, maybe the next time that happens, instead of muddying my way through, I will just ask some of those questions that we talked about instead.

THOMAS WEDELL-WEDELLSBORG: That sounds like a good idea.

SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: So, Thomas, this has really helped me reframe the way I think about a couple of problems in my own life, and I’m just wondering. I know you do this professionally, but is there a problem in your life that thinking this way has helped you solve?

THOMAS WEDELL-WEDELLSBORG: I’ve, of course, I’ve been swallowing my own medicine on this, too, and I think I have, well, maybe two different examples, and in one case somebody else did the reframing for me. But in one case, when I was younger, I often kind of struggled a little bit. I mean, this is my teenage years, kind of hanging out with my parents. I thought they were pretty annoying people. That’s not really fair, because they’re quite wonderful, but that’s what life is when you’re a teenager.

And one of the things that struck me, suddenly, and this was kind of the positive exception was, there was actually an evening where we really had a good time, and there wasn’t a conflict. And the core thing was, I wasn’t just seeing them in their old house where I grew up. It was, actually, we were at a restaurant. And it suddenly struck me that so much of the sometimes, kind of, a little bit, you love them but they’re annoying kind of dynamic, is tied to the place, is tied to the setting you are in.

And of course, if– you know, I live abroad now, if I visit my parents and I stay in my old bedroom, you know, my mother comes in and wants to wake me up in the morning. Stuff like that, right? And it just struck me so, so clearly that it’s– when I change this setting, if I go out and have dinner with them at a different place, that the dynamic, just that dynamic disappears.

SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: Well, Thomas, this has been really, really helpful. Thank you for talking with me today.

THOMAS WEDELL-WEDELLSBORG: Thank you, Sarah.  

HANNAH BATES: That was Thomas Wedell-Wedellsborg in conversation with Sarah Green Carmichael on the HBR IdeaCast. He’s an expert in problem solving and innovation, and he’s the author of the book, What’s Your Problem?: To Solve Your Toughest Problems, Change the Problems You Solve .

We’ll be back next Wednesday with another hand-picked conversation about leadership from the Harvard Business Review. If you found this episode helpful, share it with your friends and colleagues, and follow our show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. While you’re there, be sure to leave us a review.

We’re a production of Harvard Business Review. If you want more podcasts, articles, case studies, books, and videos like this, find it all at HBR dot org.

This episode was produced by Anne Saini, and me, Hannah Bates. Ian Fox is our editor. Music by Coma Media. Special thanks to Maureen Hoch, Adi Ignatius, Karen Player, Ramsey Khabbaz, Nicole Smith, Anne Bartholomew, and you – our listener.

See you next week.

• Subscribe On:

Latest in this series

This article is about leadership.

• Decision making and problem solving
• Power and influence
• Business management

Partner Center

“A problem well stated is a problem half-solved.”

Related Quotes

• The zipper displaces the button and a man lacks just that much time to think while dressing at dawn, a philosophical hour, and thus a melancholy hour. — Ray Bradbury
• It ought to be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things. Because the innovator has for enemies all those who have done well under the old conditions, and lukewarm defenders in those who may do well under the new. This coolness arises partly from fear of the opponents, who have the laws on their side, and partly from the incredulity of men, who do not readily believe in new things until they have had a long experience of them. — Niccolò Machiavelli
• History is filled with brilliant people who wanted to fix things and just made them worse. — Chuck Palahniuk
• People think focus means saying yes to the thing you've got to focus on. But that's not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully. I'm actually as proud of the things we haven't done as the things I have done. Innovation is saying no to 1,000 things. — Steve Jobs
• Musical innovation is full of danger to the State, for when modes of music change, the fundamental laws of the State always change with them. — Plato
• There are not more than five musical notes, yet the combinations of these five give rise to more melodies than can ever be heard. — Sun Tzu
• Our wretched species is so made that those who walk on the well-trodden path always throw stones at those who are showing a new road. — Voltaire
• Politics determine who has the power, not who has the truth. — Paul Krugman
• & Mujerista
• Ambition & Fame
• Anti-Government
• Arab Spring
• Architecture
• Arts & Literature
• Bipartisanship & Compromise
• Civil Disobedience
• Collective Bargaining
• Communication & Rhetoric
• Congress & Legislation
• Constitution
• Consumerism
• Corporate Responsibility
• Courts & Supreme Court
• Death & Dying
• Death Penalty
• Debt & Deficit
• Decision Making
• Defense & Homeland Security
• Drugs & Medicine
• Elections & Campaigning
• Environment & Climate Change
• Equal Rights
• Food and Drink
• Food Stamps
• Foreign Leaders
• Foreign Policy
• Founding Fathers
• Free Market
• Free Speech
• Freedom & Liberty
• Generations
• Gun Control
• Human Nature
• Human Rights
• IMF & World Bank
• Immigration
• Individuality
• International Affairs
• Investments
• MediCare & MedicAid
• Mental Health
• Military & Armed Forces
• Music & Film
• National Security
• Partisanship
• Political Aspirations
• Political Parties
• Political Responsibilities
• Pop-Culture
• Power & Privilege
• Public Opinion & Polls
• Race & Ethnicity
• Radio & television
• Redistricting & Gerrymandering
• Regulations
• Relationships & Marriage
• Reproductive Rights
• Science & Technology
• Second Amendment & Gun Control
• Separation of Church and State
• Sex & Sexuality
• Slavery & Human Trafficking
• Social And Cultural
• Social Media
• Social Safety Net
• Social Security
• Sports & Leisure
• Supreme Court
• Third Parties
• Transgender
• Uncategorized
• Uncertainty
• United Nation
• Wall Street
• War & Peace

Landscape Architecture Theory pp 217–242 Cite as

Problem Definition

• Michael D. Murphy  

2421 Accesses

P sychologist and philosopher John Dewey said that “a problem well stated is half solved.” Albert Einstein elaborated on the theme when he said that the “formulation of a problem is far more essential than its solution, which may be merely a matter of . . . skill. To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle, requires creative imagination and marks real advance.” Raising the right questions to correctly frame a problem has been a recurring theme among the world’s great thinkers. It is a creative act, as relevant in design as in science or philosophy or any other endeavor.

• Design Concept
• Design Decision
• Online Appendix
• Design Program
• Mission Statement

These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

The beginning is the most important part of the work. —Plato

Judge a man by his questions rather than by his answers. —Voltaire

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution .

Alexander, C. 1964. Notes on the synthesis of form . Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Google Scholar  

Alexander, C., S. Ishikawa, M. Silverstein, I. King, and S. Angel. 1977. A pattern language: Towns, buildings, construction . New York: Oxford University Press.

Allen, E. E. 1980. Personal comment.

Capra, F. 1982. The turning point: Science, society and the rising culture . New York: Simon and Schuster.

Lynch, K. and G. Hack. 1984. Site planning, 3 rd ed. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Marsh, W. M. 1998. Landscape planning: Environmental applications , 3 rd ed. New York: John Wiley & Sons.

Ndubisi, F. 1997. “Landscape ecological planning.” [In 1997. Thompson, G. F. and Steiner, F. R. (Eds.), Ecological design and planning . New York: John Wiley & Sons.].

Ndubisi, F. 2002. “Managing change in the landscape: A synthesis of approaches for ecological planning.” Landscape Journal (21) no. 1: 138–55.

Article   Google Scholar  

Peña, W. M. with S. Parshall and K. Kelly. 1987. Problem seeking: An architectural primer, 3 rd ed. Washington, DC: American Institute of Architects Press.

Sanoff, H. 1977. Methods of architectural programming. Stroudsburg, PA: Dowden Hutchinson & Ross Inc.

Steiner, F. R. 1991. The Living Landscape . New York: McGraw-Hill.

White, E. T. 1991. Design briefing in England . Tucson, AZ: Architectural Media.

Whitehead, A. N. 1925 (1997). Science and the modern world . New York: Simon and Schuster.

Zeisel, J. 1988. Inquiry by design: Tools for environment-behavior research . New York: Cambridge University Press.

Peña, W. M., W. W. Caudill, and J. Focke. 1977. Problem seeking: An architectural programming primer , 2 nd ed. New York: Cahners Books International.

Download references

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2016 Michael D. Murphy

About this chapter

Cite this chapter.

Murphy, M.D. (2016). Problem Definition. In: Landscape Architecture Theory. Island Press, Washington, DC. https://doi.org/10.5822/978-1-61091-751-3_8

Download citation

DOI : https://doi.org/10.5822/978-1-61091-751-3_8

Publisher Name : Island Press, Washington, DC

Print ISBN : 978-1-61091-827-5

Online ISBN : 978-1-61091-751-3

eBook Packages : Earth and Environmental Science Earth and Environmental Science (R0)

Share this chapter

Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:

Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.

Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative

• Publish with us

Policies and ethics

• Find a journal
• Track your research

Search form

You are here.

• Step 1: Define the Problem (or Opportunity)

There’s a saying in marketing research that a problem half defined is a problem half solved. Defining the “problem” of the research sounds simple, doesn’t it? Suppose your product is tutoring other students in a subject you’re a whiz at. You have been tutoring for a while, and people have begun to realize you’re darned good at it. Then, suddenly, your business drops off. Or it explodes, and you can’t cope with the number of students you’re being asked help. If the business has exploded, should you try to expand your services? Perhaps you should subcontract with some other “whiz” students. You would send them students to be tutored, and they would give you a cut of their pay for each student you referred to them.

Both of these scenarios would be a problem for you, wouldn’t they? They are problems insofar as they cause you headaches. But are they really   the   problem? Or are they the symptoms of something bigger? For example, maybe your business has dropped off because your school is experiencing financial trouble and has lowered the number of scholarships given to incoming freshmen. Consequently, there are fewer total students on campus who need your services. Conversely, if you’re swamped with people who want you to tutor them, perhaps your school awarded more scholarships than usual, so there are a greater number of students who need your services. Alternately, perhaps you ran an ad in your school’s college newspaper, and that led to the influx of students wanting you to tutor them.

Businesses are in the same boat you are as a tutor. They take a look at symptoms and try to drill down to the potential causes. If you approach a marketing research company with either scenario—either too much or too little business—the firm will seek more information from you such as the following:

• In what semester(s) did your tutoring revenues fall (or rise)?
• In what subject areas did your tutoring revenues fall (or rise)?
• In what sales channels did revenues fall (or rise): Were there fewer (or more) referrals from professors or other students? Did the ad you ran result in fewer (or more) referrals this month than in the past months?
• Among what demographic groups did your revenues fall (or rise)—women or men, people with certain majors, or first-year, second-, third-, or fourth-year students?

The key is to look at all potential causes so as to narrow the parameters of the study to the information you actually need to make a good decision about how to fix your business if revenues have dropped or whether or not to expand it if your revenues have exploded.

The next task for the researcher is to put into writing the research objective. The   research objective   is the goal(s) the research is supposed to accomplish. The marketing research objective for your tutoring business might read as follows:

To survey college professors who teach 100- and 200-level math courses to determine why the number of students referred for tutoring dropped in the second semester.

This is admittedly a simple example designed to help you understand the basic concept. If you take a marketing research course, you will learn that research objectives get a lot more complicated than this. The following is an example:

“To gather information from a sample representative of the U.S. population among those who are “very likely” to purchase an automobile within the next 6 months, which assesses preferences (measured on a 1–5 scale ranging from “very likely to buy” to “not likely at all to buy”) for the model diesel at three different price levels. Such data would serve as input into a forecasting model that would forecast unit sales, by geographic regions of the country, for each combination of the model’s different prices and fuel configurations. 1

Now do you understand why defining the problem is complicated and half the battle? Many a marketing research effort is doomed from the start because the problem was improperly defined. Coke’s ill-fated decision to change the formula of Coca-Cola in 1985 is a case in point: Pepsi had been creeping up on Coke in terms of market share over the years as well as running a successful promotional campaign called the “Pepsi Challenge,” in which consumers were encouraged to do a blind taste test to see if they agreed that Pepsi was better. Coke spent four years researching “the problem.” Indeed, people seemed to like the taste of Pepsi better in blind taste tests. Thus, the formula for Coke was changed. But the outcry among the public was so great that the new formula didn’t last long—a matter of months—before the old formula was reinstated. Some marketing experts believe Coke incorrectly defined the problem as “How can we beat Pepsi in taste tests?” instead of “How can we gain market share against Pepsi?” 2

• Creating Offerings That Have Value
• Communicating Offerings
• Delivering Offerings
• Exchanging Offerings KEY TAKEAWAY REVIEW QUESTIONS
• For-Profit Companies
• Nonprofit Organizations
• Individuals KEY TAKEAWAY REVIEW QUESTIONS
• Marketing Enables Profitable Transactions to Occur
• Marketing Delivers Value
• Marketing Benefits Society
• Marketing Costs Money
• Marketing Offers People Career Opportunities KEY TAKEAWAY REVIEW QUESTIONS
• Marketing’s Role in the Organization
• The Marketing Plan
• The Changing Marketing Environment KEY TAKEAWAY REVIEW QUESTIONS
• Discussion Questions and Activities DISCUSSION QUESTIONS ACTIVITIES
• What Is a Value Proposition? KEY TAKEAWAY REVIEW QUESTIONS
• Where Strategic Planning Occurs within Firms LEARNING OBJECTIVES KEY TAKEAWAY REVIEW QUESTIONS
• Conducting a Situation Analysis
• Conducting a SWOT Analysis
• Assessing the Internal Environment
• The Competitive Environment
• Competitive Analysis
• The Political and Legal Environment
• The Economic Environment
• Natural Resources
• The Mission Statement KEY TAKEAWAY REVIEW QUESTIONS
• Developing Objectives
• Formulating Strategies KEY TAKEAWAY REVIEW QUESTIONS
• Questions Marks or Problem Children
• The General Electric Approach KEY TAKEAWAY REVIEW QUESTIONS
• Stage 1. Need Recognition
• Stage 2. Search for Information
• Stage 3. Product Evaluation
• Stage 4. Product Choice and Purchase
• Stage 5. Postpurchase Use and Evaluation
• Stage 6. Disposal of the Product
• Low-Involvement versus High-Involvement Buying Decisions KEY TAKEAWAY REVIEW QUESTIONS
• The Consumer’s Physical Situation
• The Consumer’s Social Situation
• The Consumer’s Time Situation
• The Reason for the Consumer’s Purchase
• The Consumer’s Mood KEY TAKEAWAY REVIEW QUESTIONS
• The Consumer’s Personality
• The Consumer’s Self-Concept
• The Consumer’s Gender
• The Consumer’s Age and Stage of Life
• The Consumer’s Lifestyle
• Audio Clip KEY TAKEAWAY REVIEW QUESTIONS
• The Consumer’s Perception
• Consumer’s Attitude KEY TAKEAWAY REVIEW QUESTIONS
• The Consumer’s Culture
• The Consumer’s Subculture(s)
• The Consumer’s Social Class
• Reference Groups and Opinion Leaders
• The Consumer’s Family KEY TAKEAWAY REVIEW QUESTIONS
• The Demand for B2B Products KEY TAKEAWAY REVIEW QUESTIONS
• Governments
• Institutions
• Who Makes the Purchasing Decisions in Business Markets? KEY TAKEAWAY REVIEW QUESTIONS
• Influencers
• Gatekeepers
• The Interpersonal and Personal Dynamics of B2B Marketing KEY TAKEAWAY REVIEW QUESTIONS
• Stages in the B2B Buying Process
• Types of B2B Buying Situations KEY TAKEAWAY REVIEW QUESTIONS
• International B2B Markets
• Types of B2B Web Sites
• Pricing in E-commerce Markets KEY TAKEAWAY REVIEW QUESTIONS
• Ethics in B2B Markets LEARNING OBJECTIVES KEY TAKEAWAY REVIEW QUESTIONS
• Benefits of Segmenting and Targeting Markets
• Segmenting and Targeting a Firm’s Current Customers Steps in One-to-One Marketing
• Types of Segmentation Bases
• Segmenting by Behavior
• Age Burger King Advergame
• Family Life Cycle
• Segmenting by Geography
• Segmenting by Psychographics
• Segmentation in B2B Markets KEY TAKEAWAY REVIEW QUESTIONS
• Selecting Target Markets
• Target-Market Strategies: Choosing the Number of Markets to Target
• Multisegment Marketing
• Concentrated Marketing
• Targeting Global Markets KEY TAKEAWAY REVIEW QUESTIONS
• Product, Price, and Service
• The Product-Dominant Approach to Marketing
• The Service-Dominant Approach to Marketing
• Product Levels and Product Lines KEY TAKEAWAY REVIEW QUESTIONS
• Convenience Offerings
• Shopping Offerings
• Specialty Offerings
• Unsought Offerings KEY TAKEAWAY REVIEW QUESTIONS
• Capital Equipment Offerings
• Raw Materials Offerings
• OEM Offerings or Components
• MRO Offerings
• Facilitating Offerings KEY TAKEAWAY REVIEW QUESTIONS
• Packaging Decisions KEY TAKEAWAY REVIEW QUESTIONS
• Managing the Offering LEARNING OBJECTIVES KEY TAKEAWAY REVIEW QUESTIONS
• Idea Generation
• Idea Screening
• Feature Specification
• Development
• Launch or Commercialization
• Evaluation KEY TAKEAWAY REVIEW QUESTIONS
• The Introduction Stage
• The Growth Stage
• The Maturity Stage
• The Decline Stage KEY TAKEAWAY REVIEW QUESTIONS
• Wholesalers
• Merchant Wholesalers
• Manufacturers’ Sales Offices or Branches
• Retailers KEY TAKEAWAY REVIEW QUESTIONS
• Disintermediation
• Multiple Channels and Alternate Channels
• International Marketing Channels KEY TAKEAWAY REVIEW QUESTIONS
• Disseminate Marketing Communications and Promote Brands
• Sorting and Regrouping Products
• Storing and Managing Inventory
• Distributing Products
• Assume Ownership Risk and Extend Credit
• Share Marketing and Other Information KEY TAKEAWAY REVIEW QUESTIONS
• Type of Customer
• Type of Product
• Channel Partner Capabilities
• The Business Environment and Technology
• Competing Products’ Marketing Channels
• Factors That Affect a Product’s Intensity of Distribution KEY TAKEAWAY REVIEW QUESTIONS
• Channel Power
• Vertical versus Horizontal Conflict
• Achieving Channel Cooperation Ethically
• Channel Integration: Vertical and Horizontal Marketing Systems KEY TAKEAWAY REVIEW QUESTIONS
• Marketing Channels versus Supply Chains LEARNING OBJECTIVES KEY TAKEAWAY REVIEW QUESTION
• Some of the Ins and Outs of Outsourcing
• Matching a Company’s Sourcing Strategies with the Needs of Its Customers KEY TAKEAWAY REVIEW QUESTIONS
• Demand Planning
• Inventory Control
• Just-in-Time Inventory Systems
• Product Tracking KEY TAKEAWAY REVIEW QUESTIONS
• How Warehouses and Distribution Centers Function
• Pipelines KEY TAKEAWAY REVIEW QUESTIONS
• Track and Trace Systems
• Reverse Logistics KEY TAKEAWAY REVIEW QUESTIONS
• Internally Generated Data and Reports
• Search Engines and Corporate Web Sites
• Publications
• Trade Shows and Associations
• Salespeople
• Suppliers and Industry Experts
• Can Market Intelligence Be Taken Too Far?
• Is Marketing Research Always Correct? KEY TAKEAWAY REVIEW QUESTIONS
• Sources of Secondary Data
• Gauging the Quality of Secondary Data Gauging the Credibility of Secondary Data: Questions to Ask
• Types of Research Design The Basic Steps of Conducting a Focus Group
• Descriptive Research
• Causal Research
• Questionnaire Design
• Testing the Questionnaire
• Step 4: Specify the Sample
• Collecting International Marketing Research Data
• Step 6: Analyze the Data
• Stage 7: Write the Research Report and Present Its Findings KEY TAKEAWAY REVIEW QUESTIONS
• Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC) and New Media LEARNING OBJECTIVES KEY TAKEAWAY REVIEW QUESTIONS
• The Promotion (Communication) Mix LEARNING OBJECTIVES KEY TAKEAWAY REVIEW QUESTIONS
• The Promotion Mix
• The Communication Process
• Perceptual Processes KEY TAKEAWAY REVIEW QUESTIONS
• Utilizing a Product’s Unique Selling Proposition (USP)
• The Organization’s Promotion Objectives
• Message Characteristics KEY TAKEAWAY REVIEW QUESTIONS
• The Promotion Budget LEARNING OBJECTIVES KEY TAKEAWAY REVIEW QUESTIONS
• Press Releases An Example of a Press Release to Introduce a New Product An Example of a Press Release to Show How a Company Helps Feed the Hungry and Restock Food Banks around the Country
• Sponsorships
• Product Placements KEY TAKEAWAY REVIEW QUESTIONS
• Types of Consumer Sales Promotions
• Types of Trade Promotions KEY TAKEAWAY REVIEW QUESTIONS
• What Salespeople Do
• Creating Value
• Managing Relationships
• Gathering Information
• Missionary Salespeople
• Trade Salespeople
• Prospectors
• Account Managers KEY TAKEAWAY REVIEW QUESTIONS
• Customer Relationships
• Types of Sales Relationships
• Script-Based Selling
• Needs-Satisfaction Selling
• Consultative Selling
• Strategic-Partner Selling
• Choosing the Right Sales Strategy for the Relationship Type and Selling Stage KEY TAKEAWAY REVIEW QUESTIONS
• The Sales Cycle
• Metrics Used by Salespeople
• Metrics Used by Sales Managers KEY TAKEAWAY REVIEW QUESTIONS
• Common Ethical Issues for Salespeople
• Company Safeguards
• Challenges Facing Sales Managers KEY TAKEAWAY REVIEW QUESTIONS
• Marketing Shortens the Sales Cycle
• Marketing Improves Conversion Ratios by Scoring Leads
• Salespeople Communicate Market Feedback
• Salespeople Monitor the Competition KEY TAKEAWAY REVIEW QUESTIONS
• Types of Outsourced Salespeople
• Advantages and Disadvantages of Outsourcing KEY TAKEAWAY REVIEW QUESTIONS
• Influencer Panels
• Organizing and Managing Influencer Panels
• Social Networking Sites and Other Social Media KEY TAKEAWAY REVIEW QUESTIONS
• Behavioral Loyalty
• Attitudinal Loyalty
• The Positive Effects of Loyalty Programs
• The Longevity Effect
• The Blocker Effect
• The Spreader Effect
• The Accelerator Effect
• Criteria for Successful Loyalty Programs
• Good Performance by a Company
• Responsiveness by a Company
• Shared Identity among Participants
• Clear Benefits
• Community Development KEY TAKEAWAY REVIEW QUESTIONS
• Customer Satisfaction Defined
• Customer Satisfaction Strategies
• Measuring Customer Satisfaction
• Handling the Complaint Process KEY TAKEAWAY REVIEW QUESTIONS
• Privacy Laws
• Warranties and Promises
• Protecting Your Company KEY TAKEAWAY REVIEW QUESTIONS
• The Pricing Framework
• Earning a Targeted Return on Investment (ROI)
• Maximizing Profits
• Maximizing Sales
• Maximizing Market Share
• Maintaining the Status Quo KEY TAKEAWAY REVIEW QUESTIONS
• Competitors
• The Economy and Government Laws and Regulations
• Product Costs KEY TAKEAWAY REVIEW QUESTIONS
• Introductory Pricing Strategies
• Pricing Approaches
• Price Adjustments KEY TAKEAWAY REVIEW QUESTIONS
• Marketing Planning Roles LEARNING OBJECTIVE KEY TAKEAWAY REVIEW QUESTIONS
• The Marketing Plan’s Outline
• The Executive Summary
• The Business Challenge
• Company Analysis
• Collaborators
• Business Climate
• The Offering
• The Communication Plan
• Distribution
• Conclusion KEY TAKEAWAY REVIEW QUESTIONS
• Judgment and Survey Techniques
• Customer and Channel Surveys
• Sales Force Composite
• Executive Opinion
• Expert Opinion
• Time Series Techniques
• Correlates and Other Models
• Response Models
• Market Tests
• Pick the Right Method(s) for Your Business and Your Decision
• Use Multiple Methods
• Use Many Variables
• Use Scenario-Based Forecasts
• Track Actual Results and Adjust KEY TAKEAWAY REVIEW QUESTIONS
• The Marketing Audit
•  Back Matter

This action cannot be undo.

Choose a delete action Empty this page Remove this page and its subpages

Content is out of sync. You must reload the page to continue.

New page type Book Topic Interactive Learning Content

• Config Page
• Add Page Before
• Add Page After
• Delete Page

Access provided by

Login to your account

If you don't remember your password, you can reset it by entering your email address and clicking the Reset Password button. You will then receive an email that contains a secure link for resetting your password

If the address matches a valid account an email will be sent to __email__ with instructions for resetting your password

Download started.

• PDF [190 KB] PDF [190 KB]
• Figure Viewer
• Download Figures (PPT)
• Add To Online Library Powered By Mendeley
• Add To My Reading List
• Export Citation
• Create Citation Alert

Commentary: A problem well put is half solved

• William L. Holman, MD William L. Holman Correspondence Address for reprints: William L. Holman, MD, Division of Cardiothoracic Surgery, Department of Surgery, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, AL 35294. Contact Affiliations Division of Cardiothoracic Surgery, Department of Surgery, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, Ala Search for articles by this author
• Jose A. Tallaj, MD Jose A. Tallaj Affiliations Division of Cardiovascular Diseases, Department of Medicine, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, Ala Search for articles by this author
• Salpy V. Pamboukian, MD Salpy V. Pamboukian Affiliations Division of Cardiovascular Diseases, Department of Medicine, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, Ala Search for articles by this author

• View Large Image
• Download Hi-res image
• Download (PPT)
• Google Scholar
• Chenoweth C.E.
• Pagani F.D.
• Hannan M.M.
• Schueler S.
• Dipchand A.I.
• Full Text PDF
• Scopus (65)
• Anderson J.M.
• Rodriguez A.
• Scopus (3724)
• Costerton J.W.
• Stewart P.S.
• Greenberg E.P.
• Scopus (9404)
• US Dept of Health and Human Services

Article info

Publication history.

Disclosures: Dr Holman serves on the Data Management Committees for Abbott and Medtronic and Dr Pamboukian serves on the Clinical Events Committee for the CARMAT US trial. Dr Tallaj reported no conflicts of interest.

The Journal policy requires editors and reviewers to disclose conflicts of interest and to decline handling or reviewing manuscripts for which they may have a conflict of interest. The editors and reviewers of this article have no conflicts of interest.

Identification

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jtcvs.2021.11.008

ScienceDirect

• Download .PPT

Linked Article

• Preview Although infections are common after left ventricular assist device implantation, the relationship between timing and type of first infection with regard to mortality is less well understood.

Related Articles

• Access for Developing Countries
• Articles & Issues
• Articles In Press
• Current Issue
• List of Issues
• Supplements
• For Authors
• About Open Access
• Author Information
• Graphical Abstract Guidelines
• Permissions
• Researcher Academy
• Submit a Manuscript
• Journal Info
• About the Journal
• Abstracting/Indexing
• Activate Online Access
• Career Opportunities
• Contact Information
• Editorial Board
• Info for Advertisers
• Related Journals
• New Content Alerts
• AATS Journals
• JTCVS Techniques
• Operative Techniques in Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery
• Seminars in Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery
• Seminars in Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery: Pediatric Cardiac Surgery Annual
• JTCVS Chinese Edition
• Submit Manuscript

The content on this site is intended for healthcare professionals.

• Privacy Policy   
• Terms and Conditions   
• Accessibility   
• Help & Contact

• Home > Publications > A Problem Defined is a Problem Half Solved

A Problem Defined is a Problem Half Solved

How do ideas for market research arise? First of all, someone has to know something about the capabilities of market research before they can think of it as a possible solution. Most people know something about market research in a general sense. They know it can be used to find out how many people do something or think something. But do they fully appreciate that it can be used to work out how much people are prepared to pay for each feature of a product? Do they know that you can work out the importance of issues that influence customer satisfaction without asking the customer how important each issue is? If you don’t know what something can do, it is fully understandable that it may not come to mind.

How Ideas Arise for Market Research

There are very few processes in business that say “before we make that decision, we must carry out market research”. The decision to do so is entirely judgmental. The manager faces a problem or has an idea and at some stage he or she may (or may not) think this is a candidate for market research.

Now it is significant that we have suggested that the person that has the idea for the research is a manager. After all, it is managers that make decisions and remember that market research is there to reduce business risk in decision making. This problem or idea usually gestates and develops before it is brought to the attention of the market research agency that is challenged with finding the information. On its way the idea may well have been bounced between people including an internal market research manager who helps scope the idea in a way that the agency can best deal with it. The point is this: it may well be weeks and sometimes months before the idea or problem is finally put before the agency and what was reasonably urgent then, is desperately urgent now. Time may determine the research solution simply because there isn’t much of it and there is a limit to what can be done in the period. It isn’t surprising therefore that the agencies at the end of the line are squeezed to work quickly.

Table 1.1 – The Gestation Period For A Market Research Idea

The Market Research Brief – A Statement of the Problem

A research brief is a statement from the sponsor setting out the objectives and background to the case in sufficient detail to enable the researcher to plan an appropriate study. As a general rule, a market research study is only as good as the brief. The brief is important to the researcher: it educates and influences the choice of method. It gives the objective to which the project is geared.

The brief is no less important for the researcher working in-house than for the agency. Research carried out by company personnel is frequently treated less stringently than when there is a price tag. The in-house researcher does, however, have the benefit of close and constant access to other internal staff who can fill in on background and product details. Though the brief is less formal, it may well be (and should be) as thorough as any delivered to an agency.

Some clients prefer to deliver their brief orally, developing points of detail during the initial discussion with the researcher. Alternatively the brief may be fully thought through and committed to paper. This can be especially important when a number of research agencies are invited to submit proposals. A written brief provides a standard which is the same for all contestants.

Whether written or oral, the research sponsor should pay regard to a number of subjects which constitute a good brief. It is at this stage that it would be useful to have a framework for scoping the issues. This framework can be thought of as a series of questions, the answers to which will constitute a very thorough brief.

• Why do this market research? What action will be taken when the research is completed? This is arguably the most important part of the brief as it will allow the researcher to work out all the other things that are required such as the specific information that will be useful (see item 5 below).
• What has caused this problem or led to this opportunity? Here it is helpful to describe the history that has led up to the research. A description of the product,/service is important and so too it would be good to talk about the way that the market is changing.
• What is known about the area of research already? It can be helpful to the market researcher to be aware of what is already known and then they can build on it and not waste money or time re-inventing it. Also, knowledge on the structure and behaviour of a market allows the researcher to be more precise in their proposals. For example, most sponsors of research have carried out some desk research or have internal reports that provide views of the market. This could be made available to the researchers who are planning a research programme if they need a deeper understanding of the market.
• Target groups for the research? Survey research has to be targeted at someone. The target for interviews need to be scoped precisely. If they are householders, should they be people who have bought a product or who are thinking of buying a product? Should they be buyers or specifiers? Should they be multiple purchasers or not? When the various target groups are listed there is a temptation to say – “yes, all of these” but remember that the greater the scope of the project the more it will cost and (usually) the longer it will take.
• What specific information is needed from the research? (e.g. market size, trends, buying behaviour, customer needs, segmentation) The person wanting the market research has almost certainly got some key information gaps that need filling. Listing them will help the professional market researchers work out if they are the right ones required for the decision and action that is planned. The professional market researchers can be expected to flesh out the information objectives with their own suggestions as they know better than anyone what can and can’t be achieved by market research.
• What is the proposed budget? Seldom are there unlimited funds for research and more often there are very limited funds. In this case it is helpful to know what the budget is for otherwise the researchers could design a full and comprehensive plan that delivers detail and accuracy to meet the action and information requirements, only to be sent back to the drawing board because there is only $15,000 (or whatever amount available).
• Are there any initial ideas for the research method? A client who is sponsoring a research project may well have a method in mind. Now is also the time to say if there is distrust of telephone interviews and a preference for face to face or if focus groups would be well received.
• Are there any reporting requirements? Increasingly the default method of reporting in the market research industry is a PowerPoint deck of slides which doubles as the presentation and the report. Researchers have no problem writing a narrative report but they would typically have to charge an extra three or four days of their time for its preparation – incurring a cost of a few thousand pounds.  The client may be eager to have access to some of the nitty gritty of the research findings such as the tabulations and verbatim comments from open ended questions. It is wise to specify this at the brief for otherwise it may not be included in the research specification.
• When are the findings required? Most research has a demanding timetable and sometimes this can be punishing. The dates by which the research is required should be specified so that even if they are really difficult, the research supplier can try to be accommodating, perhaps with an interim debrief or regular reporting sessions.

The research brief should be a dialogue and even the most thorough brief covering all the issues we have listed will generate some additional questions from the researchers. This is healthy and to be expected as it indicates that the problem is being thought through and interest is being shown. Sometimes the written brief and a series of phone calls are sufficient for the agency to get on with their part of the process – the proposal – and sometimes there will be justification for a face-to-face meeting. Nearly, but not always, these briefing sessions are on the Client’s turf where it is easier to show the product, look at brochures and reports, and meet with other people who may be able to contribute to the debate.

The Market Research Proposal – The Return of Brief (ROB)

Having received the brief the researcher, whether in-house or from an agency, must submit a written proposal to the sponsor which states an appreciation of the problem, the objectives, the research method and the timing. It is critical that the proposal is in writing as this is the offer of a contract which is likely to have a considerable financial value.

The nature of market research is such that it is seldom possible to pin every aspect of the contract down in detail. For a start the questionnaire has not yet been developed and this is a key to the survey. The number and type of questions in the questionnaire will have a material influence on the quality of the work. Flexibility is going to be needed on many aspects of the work and as the research progresses and information is uncovered, there may need to be some changes to the objectives. For the most part, however, the research methods will remain the same as this is the basis of the price. Armed with the brief, the researcher now knows what the client is looking for and must balance four factors in arriving at an appropriate design.

The Information – What is Required?

The information required may not have been presented in the most orderly fashion in the brief. A research sponsor knows what action will be taken if the outcome is positive and will have a view on the type of information that will help in that decision. All this will be shared in the brief. The researcher must now offer some order to the decision outcomes, the research objectives and any specific questions that may be asked. Examples of these three levels are as follows:

Table 1.2 – Outcomes, Objectives & Questions

The researcher must work out what can reasonably be included in the project as an objective as well as what may have to be left out. As the researcher is thinking about the objectives, inevitably there will be consideration of the methods by which these will be achieved.

Consider the table above and think about what methods you would use for this range of outcomes, objectives and questions. Actually the researcher has a choice and could use a qualitative tool such as focus groups to get a reasonable fix on the answers. However, even with a number of focus groups it would still be a qualitative finding. You would have a good feel and understanding of all the answers to the questions but that is all it would be – a feel and understanding. If the research is being commissioned to make a decision on the launch of a new product, some quantification is required. Here the choices are two-fold; home placement tests or mall/hall tests (where the respondent is recruited from the shopping mall and brought to a nearby hall to experience the product). The arguments in favour of one approach rather than another or mixing different approaches will be made in the proposal under the “methods” section.

The Accuracy – How Accurate does it need to be?

When professional market researchers ask their clients how accurate any data should be, the answer is often such as “very accurate” or “as accurate as possible”. However, accuracy, at least where fieldwork is involved, has a price and as general rule, increases in accuracy not only cost more but disproportionately more 1 .

Nor is a high level of accuracy always needed to meet the overall research objective. If a company is entering a new market, where common sense and observation tells us the market is huge in size, there may be little point in spending lots of money closely measuring its size. An approximation will do and the money saved may be better spent on some other information need. For example, a company that considers sales of $1 million per annum to be worthwhile might not care if the total market size was $100 million or $150 million (an accuracy of +/- 50%). If, however, in an advertising research study, the objective was to measure the impact of a campaign on brand awareness through comparing before and after campaign measures, the accuracy must be at least commensurate with the anticipated increase in awareness.

The required accuracy must, therefore, be linked to how the resulting data will be used – the nature of the decisions which the research will guide. Even if a precise definition of accuracy is not practically possible (this is often the case) some judgement should still be made on the reliability sought from the information. This may be as simple as a contrast between an attempt at measurement (quantitative research) compared to just description and explanation (qualitative research). Both approaches can contribute to effective marketing decisions but it is important that neither is used for the wrong application. Like information coverage, accuracy levels need to be considered before deciding on appropriate research methods.

• If a sample of 500 is statistically likely to be accurate to +/- 5%, what size of sample will be needed to increase the accuracy to +/- 2.5%? It is not 1000 but nearer 2000 and the costs involved possibly more than twice as high. Diminishing returns very much apply.

The Budget – How Much Have I Got to Play With?

What budget should be made available for the research project? The methodologically pure researcher would argue that the budget should be whatever is needed to meet the research objectives, provide the information required and to finance the methods needed to produce that information to the defined accuracy level. However, in practice, it is more a question of what funds are available or can be afforded for the project relative to other calls on business expenditure. Furthermore, even if cash is freely available, there are other considerations and especially the amount at risk in the decision which the research is to guide. If the decision entails capital expenditure of $20 million, a research budget of $50,000 may be well worth spending – if the research indicates that the planned expenditure is a poor investment, only the research cost will be lost rather than most or all of the $20 million investment. (In writing this we are reminded of the many chemical plants that have been built around the world in anticipation of growth in demand that has never materialised. We suspect that many were commissioned without any solid market research studies). However, if the business investment decision has low cost implications, the justification for carrying out the research will be less. Obviously there is no point in spending $10,000 on research to decide whether to invest in a project entailing only this level of expenditure.

The only qualification we would make to this bland statement is regarding research which contributes to a series of future decisions. We recently carried out a research project examining the effectiveness of a planned promotional campaign for an industrial gas manufacturer. The cost of the research was $30,000 and the campaign itself was only $200,000. However, the gas manufacturer runs many such campaigns across its divisions and the learning about what makes its advertising more effective sharpened all its campaigns and will do so for some years to come. The long-time pay-back will be considerable.

The Timetable – When is it Needed By?

A research plan needs a timetable. The two factors that determine the timetable are the deadline and how long the planned research activities will take to carry out. Resources determine the latter and experience of the intended methods will enable realistic estimates to be made of how long each stage will take. The deadline on the other hand is likely to be driven by external events and time-frames. The research results may be needed to fit the lead time in installing plant, or for a business plan. A demanding deadline of two or three weeks for a research project may effectively limit it to a quick (and dirty?) design as there just isn’t enough time to do the job properly. Whether researchers should turn down such jobs is hardly worth debating since in this commercial world agencies will nearly always try to accommodate their clients’ needs. To an extent it may be possible to speed up the research to fit such demands. Certainly good research can be carried out within a short timetable but beyond some point, quality will be compromised.

Most research agencies need around six weeks to carry out a project given the likelihood of the need for three or four sequential stages. Getting questionnaires designed is in theory only a day’s work for a professional researcher. However, getting it approved and modified to the final version (often it is at version 5 before it is finally piloted) can take an age as it bounces around like a pin-ball between the different parties within the client company. The following timetable is probably realistic for a project involving four focus groups and 500 interviews with the general public.

Table 1.3 – A Typical Market Research Timetable

What to Expect in a Proposal (Return of Brief)

The proposal is one of the most important documents a researcher ever writes. (Indeed it is one of the few documents that researchers write as reporting is nearly always in PowerPoint slides). The content, structure and quality of the proposal may account for well over 50% of the decision to place the business with an agency. Within the client company the proposal will do the rounds, winning or losing approval with its many readers without the accompaniment of the human voice of the author. It is the most important weapon the agency can use to win business.

The proposal is more than just a research design with a price; it is a statement of the agency that has prepared it. Whereas the brief may be confused, limited in scope or lacking in detail; the proposal must bring clarity, add to the understanding and make an authoritative claim for the recommended research method. A spelling or grammatical error could be sufficient to cause the client to see this as a reflection of sloppy working standards and disregard the content of the rest of the proposal.

The Introduction

The proposal may run to 10 pages or so in length. It deserves a title page and table of contents. In a lengthy proposal, the first section could be a summary but more usually it is an introduction to the subject stating the background and circumstances that have led to the research project being considered. This background contains the first words that will be read in the document and they need to resonate. It may contain some additional information to add to the story following a search on the internet or the odd interview (also demonstrating keenness of interest in the subject). As the reader gets to the end of the first section, the proposal has done a good deal of its selling job.

The Objectives

Next is the section on objectives. This is another important chapter to the client as it is a statement of what will be obtained for the money. Typically the research would be given an overall goal such as:

To assess the market for weather forecasting services amongst electricity generating, transmission and distribution (retail) companies in the US.

A more detailed listing of the many research objectives would then follow. A flavour of these can be gleaned from two or three objectives taken out of a list of what amounted to around ten in the actual proposal.

• To gain an understanding of how weather affects business operations of energy companies in the three target markets and their key weather information needs (i.e. the perceived importance of the weather to their business and business planning processes and the type of products/services they need).
• To gain an understanding of the extent of weather information usage and the nature of that use (i.e. what they use it for, how and why). This would include; where they get their existing weather information from, how it is delivered, the problems they encounter, how much they spend, and if they do not use weather information, why not.
• To assess the perceived future demand for weather information products and services in the target energy markets (including do respondents perceive they will use weather information more or less in the future?).

The Methods

To the researcher, the methods section is probably the most important. If the researcher gets this wrong, the objectives will not be achieved. The client will clearly be interested in the methods but much will be taken on trust. If the researcher says that a particular method is appropriate, then it may go unquestioned.

In the section on methods the researcher may begin with a brief overview of the approach and the factors that have influenced the design. It is not unusual in a research programme to have an eclectic range of methods including some secondary research (desk research) to support the primary fieldwork. The fieldwork could have a qualitative phase and this could be a number of depth interviews or focus groups. If there is a quantitative stage it will be spelled out in detail, arguing the reasons for choosing the telephone or face-to-face interviews, the size of the sample and any quotas for certain groups of respondents.

Timing and Costs

By the time the research sponsor arrives at the section that lays out the timetable and the costs, the project will most probably be won or lost. Of course the price tag is important but research is not a commodity product. There are significant differences between research suppliers and clients recognise this. It is not a business where the cheapest product always wins.

The idea for carrying out market research may ferment for a number of weeks before a commitment is made to obtain proposals. In briefing an agency the client should try to give answers to a number of questions:

• What action will be taken when the research is completed?
• What has caused this problem or led to this opportunity?
• What is known about the area of research already?
• Target groups for the research?
• What specific information is needed from the research?
• What is the proposed budget?
• Are there any initial ideas for the research method?
• Are there any reporting requirements?
• When are the findings required?

The market research agency will prepare a proposal (the return of brief) after weighing up what information is required, the accuracy of information required, the budget, and the timing. With these four factors in mind, a written proposal is prepared that covers the following issues:

• An understanding of the problem
• The objectives in overall terms and in detail
• The method that will be employed to achieve the objectives
• The timetable
• The credentials of the researchers

The quality of the market research proposal plays a large part in whether or not the agency wins the project.

Contact Us >

To learn how our market research solutions can help your business

Speak to an expert...

• Keep up to date with our latest research
• First name *
• Last name *
• Company name *
• By subscribing to this newsletter, you are opting in to our marketing communications. Read our privacy policy for more information.
• Name This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Privacy Overview

How to Define and Build an Effective Cyber Threat Intelligence Capability by Henry Dalziel, Eric Olson, James Carnall

Get full access to How to Define and Build an Effective Cyber Threat Intelligence Capability and 60K+ other titles, with a free 10-day trial of O'Reilly.

There are also live events, courses curated by job role, and more.

A Problem Well-Defined is Half-Solved

This chapter covers the importance of molding a threat-intelligence program around (company-specific) business objectives, that is, it must pursue a well-defined mission that is bounded, scoped, and relatively rigid; work within a set of clear expectations in a portfolio of responsibilities that everyone agrees to; and meaningfully report metrics that matter to management and budget holders.

Get How to Define and Build an Effective Cyber Threat Intelligence Capability now with the O’Reilly learning platform.

O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.

Don’t leave empty-handed

Get Mark Richards’s Software Architecture Patterns ebook to better understand how to design components—and how they should interact.

It’s yours, free.

Check it out now on O’Reilly

Dive in for free with a 10-day trial of the O’Reilly learning platform—then explore all the other resources our members count on to build skills and solve problems every day.

Neuroplasticity

A problem well-stated is a problem half-solved, improving cognitive flexibility to meet today’s challenging world..

Posted December 29, 2020 | Reviewed by Hara Estroff Marano

2020 has been a challenging year, to say the least. We have all had to make changes, in some cases significant changes, in the way we do things. Many of us have left our offices to work at home. Our children are also schooling from home. We can’t readily go out and see the people we care about,. The list can go on and on. We have had to draw on our adaptive instincts more than any time in the recent past. Darwin would be proud!

The ability to adapt is difficult. Many struggle because they are overwhelmed by the changes as well as the domino effect caused by these changes. Just working from home requires ensuring an appropriate workspace, navigating who else may also be working from home (children or partner), having proper internet access, ensuring that videocalls don’t capture inappropriate images or sounds, and knowing what to do if those images or sounds are unavoidable (dog barking, toddler barging in, etc.). And these are just the tip of the iceberg!

A recent CNBC.com article, “These are the 5 most valuable skills to learn right now” (CNBC.com, Scott Steinberg, 11/04/20), suggested that there are five soft skills that people need to master to help them deal with the rapidly changing and unpredictable world in which we live. One of Steinberg’s five is cognitive flexibility.

For some people the skill comes naturally, but they are few and far between. Others might have some flexibility in certain areas but can’t translate the skill to other areas. For example, someone who may have amazing people skills can’t deal with the challenges of handling multiple people at the same time. Or someone who has incredible math skills may not be able to write or verbalize ideas well.

Such inability to cope can cause physical as well as emotional distress. Without cognitive flexibility you may feel like you’re trapped in a maze and experience high levels of stress and anxiety . Think about what happens when you are out of your comfort zone. Your hands may sweat, you may stutter , lose words or familiar concepts, you may feel nauseated or like there’s a pit in your stomach.

We all tend to play to our strengths, so that people person is going to put him or herself in situations in which those skills are crucial, like sales, social work, event planning. But continually putting yourself in win situations will not help you develop cognitive flexibility. You need to work through uncomfortable situations repeatedly in order to habituate a new pattern of behavior. This kind of repeated rehearsal makes the uncomfortable more familiar and reduces its negative energy.

I developed the exercise below when I worked with NASA scientists. I have used this exercise in many workshops and speaking engagements. The goal is to practice neuroplasticity. My intention is to give participants a problem with many possible answers—their job is to determine how many correct answers they can find, and most importantly, explain the precepts used to determine each answer.

The exercise requires participants to think about more than one thing at a time. So their first answer may play to whatever their particular strength may be, but they also need to think about the exercise in more uncomfortable ways.

The exercise below has many possible answers. Identify the variable in the problem and then generate possible relationships that result in a feasible answer. If the top row is a problem, which of the answers below go in the first and last box and why. The point is to be able to explain why you chose a particular letter for the first box and why another letter for the last.

I’m going to end this blog entry here, because I want you to really try this and see how many answers you can generate.

In my next blog, I will show seven possible answers and how they were determined, and give you the opportunity to identify the specific relationships used to create the answer. Cognitive restructuring, and the development of neuroplasticity, changes the brain and ultimately enhances critical thinking, problem-solving, and creativity . The goal is for you to practice these skills so that this new way of thinking becomes a habit that you can use when faced with complex personal and professional problems. This is a challenging exercise, but these are challenging times! Good luck!

Donalee Markus, Ph.D., specializes in the clinical application of neuroscience to rehabilitate concussion, stroke, and traumatic brain injury, enhance academic performance, and maintain memory skills.

• Find a Therapist
• Find a Treatment Center
• Find a Support Group
• International
• New Zealand
• South Africa
• Switzerland
• Asperger's
• Bipolar Disorder
• Chronic Pain
• Eating Disorders
• Passive Aggression
• Personality
• Goal Setting
• Positive Psychology
• Stopping Smoking
• Low Sexual Desire
• Relationships
• Child Development
• Therapy Center NEW
• Diagnosis Dictionary
• Types of Therapy

Understanding what emotional intelligence looks like and the steps needed to improve it could light a path to a more emotionally adept world.

• Coronavirus Disease 2019
• Affective Forecasting
• Neuroscience