Standing On The Shoulders of Giants

This week I am at the yearly TOC ICO in Chicago, understanding the latest development in Theory of Constraints and meeting good friends and colleagues. It will be the first conference without Eli Goldratt, and the conference theme has been based on one of Eli's last ideas, which is based on the famous Newton quote:  "If I haven been further it has been because I have been standing on the Shoulders of Giants".   

Last year, Eli G developed a process to help TOC practitioners to improve the current body of knowledge.    The basic (summarized) version is the following:

1.  Identify a Giant, or a current solution that you want to expand on
2.  Identify the Area Not Addressed by The Giant, or the new area you want to expand the solution into
3. Get on the Shoulders, using previous effective concepts that have worked well in the past
4.  Identify the Conceptual Difference, or have the courage to identify "inconsistencies" between expected results and current results in the new area that you want to expand the solution into
5.  Identify the wrong assumption, or check which of the current assumptions that the solutions uses is not valid in the new area of application
6.   Conduct the full analysis, or do your due diligence

Although the process is a little difficult to grasp at first, the basic idea is that when you are trying to improve a particular solutions for a problem, try to find the instances where it is not working (untouched area), find why it is not working (wrong assumption) and expand the solution, using previous knowledge.

Improving and finding better solutions is not easy, but as Eli Goldratt used to say:

Do you want an easy life or a meaningful life?