I’ve been skimming through the U-theory book and it’s quite interesting. I was convinced by the PDCA cycle, but that was because the cycle was already running, and if you try to get someone who is not running to do it, they stop at “So, how do you make a plan? Or, if you try to do it with a person who is not already rotating, he/she may make a detailed plan without being aware of the possibility that he/she lacks knowledge about the problem, and the plan may fall apart later on. Whether it’s the hypothesis-test-validate-revise cycle or the popular lean startup, when you actually try it, the question arises, “So, how do you find hypothesis? I have been saying “First, an observation” about the problem of being stumped before entering this kind of “cycle,” but Yoo Theory divides this part into seven stages. The first is the stage of looking at things according to preconceived notions, in other words, “you can’t see. Next there is the “looking” phase, followed by the “looking closely” phase. So far, it looks like a breakdown of “observing first”. The next stage is the bottom of the U-shape, and to enter this stage, we have to let go of our preconceived notions once. This is a state of identification with the problem without judgment, such as flow state by Chicxent Mihai (China) or pure experience by Geitaro Nishida. The experience gathered by this process is then crystallized in the next stage, and a new, non-existing concept is created. The next step is to create a prototype based on that new understanding, and the next step is practice. I would say that the book is dedicated to the first D of the PDCA cycle, how to take the first step without yet having the material knowledge for the P.
I wrote this later. U Theory is interesting - NISHIO Hirokazu’s Hatena Diary
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