Wicked Problems and General Morphological Analysis (GMA)
Posted: November 1st, 2012 | Author: Domingo | Filed under: General Morphological Analysis | Tags: cross-consistency assessment, Fritz Zwicky, General Morphological Analysis, GMA, Rittel and Webber, Swedish Defence Research Agency, Tom Ritchey, wicked problems | 2 Comentarios »You may like it more or less but what is certain is that life is mainly about solving problems and they are sometimes elusive, confusing, ill-defined… the so-called wicked problems.
As I mentioned in my previous post The Design of Business, wicked problems are ambiguous, evolving, linked to moral, social and political issues and without a clearly defined solution. The classical linear mathematical approach -understand the problem, gather and sum up information, and develop solutions- is not valid for them. As Dr. Tom Ritchey mentioned in one his writings, Rittel and Webber -the ones who coined the term wicked problems in his article “Dilemmas in a General Theory of Planning” in 1973- deemed this kind of problems entailed the following features amongst others: