«Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is probably the reason why so few engage in it.»

Henry Ford

Hi-tech companies are shrouded in secrecy. If one removed the external trappings (luxurious offices, corporate cars, and political games), one would see what remained, and the very heart of a hi-tech company: the process of directed engineering thinking.

All of us who attended a modern school can "invent" something related to history or literary criticism. This is exactly what we studied in literature: take a certain, well-known object about which many other people often thought, consider it at an unusual angle, argue, add a couple of our own thoughts, and draw soul-shaking conclusions.

However, for some mysterious reason, the field of natural sciences cultivates different skills: students are taught to memorize a considerable number of facts and to solve problems following a set pattern.

This is why we rarely meet people capable of thinking creatively and solving scientific problems, and why the majority of technological decisions made by different manufacturers are similar. This situation, where manufacturers have similar solutions, is considered the norm.

However, regardless of subject, whatever humans produce can be repeatedly improved upon. How? By adding new thoughts to it.

Doing this is easy. Take away the aura of secrecy and mystery, and take a bottom-line, pragmatic look at the history of hi-tech products. You can easily find that it contains a dozen basic principles of development, applications that have resulted in all of our technological revolutions.

Studies in this field have been described in books such as the Theory of Solving Inventor's Problems, the Blue Ocean Strategy, the Theory of Constraints, and in modern works in cognitive psychology.

To create “revolutionary breakthroughs,” these principles of development can be applied to every problem. As a result of such a mental experiment, you can uncover a set of new, effective, and original ideas for solving technological problems.