Value-Focused Thinking: A Path to Creative Decisionmaking

What about the cases where decision problems do not appear? Should we just sit and wait? Maybe so. But only if sitting and waiting is an explicit choice made because we have decided that it is the best thing to do. Often, instead of sitting and waiting, it may be preferable to identify decision opportunities, that is, opportunities to better achiev

reasoning processes to identify the mechanisms by which the fundamental objectives can be achieved. Finally, for each mechanism, you create alternatives or classes of alternatives by asking what control you have over that mechanism.

is relevant to wide classes of problems where you want something from someone else.

and one may settle for an alternative considerably less desirable than others that could have been developed.

value-focused thinking does not simply accept prespecified problems or prespecified lists of alternatives.

Truly creative or different alternatives remain hidden in another part of the mind, unreachable by mere tweaking. Deep and persistent thought is required to jar them into the consciousness.

opportunity. Often this involves broadening the context of the problem,

The idea is to create an alternative that gets you what you want and at the same time makes others better off.

The responses will probably add objectives to your list.