Field Notes · The workshop beneath the work
Foundations
The thinkers and ideas the original principles stand on, argue with and extend.
Foundations maps the intellectual conversations around the ideas on this site. Each entry is an intellectual field guide, not a biography, written to show what problem a thinker was solving, what holds up, what is contested and where the work here converges, differs or extends it.
Understanding the lineage strengthens original thought rather than diminishing it. Many of the ideas in the Field Notes arise from bringing previously separate conversations into contact, and this is where those conversations are laid side by side.
Three ways in
By thinker
Enter through the person, from Drucker to Alexander, and read what problem they were solving.
By theory
Enter through an idea, fit and misfit, fixation, wicked problems, and follow it into the work.
By principle
Enter from a First Principle and trace the thinking beneath it, the precedent, the evidence and the tension.
The launch set
The field guides the current First Principles rest on. The collection grows as the principles do.
01
Peter Drucker and the customer-defined business
The customer defines value and what a business is. The floor under Value Lives in the Customer.
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02
Christopher Alexander: fit, misfit and the problem boundary
Good form resolves a problem's misfits, drawn at the right boundary. First of a series.
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03
Duncker and Luchins on fixation
The experiments showing the mind reaches first for the familiar, and the familiar can block the better answer.
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04
Kahneman and Klein on intuitive expertise
When a fast answer can be trusted, and when it cannot. The bound on The First Answer Is Familiar.
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05
Rittel and Webber on wicked problems
Why a systemic problem resists an artifact. The engine of the Levels of Design mismatch diagnostic.
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