Wicked Problems
Introduction
Technology is moving very fast these days and lots of things have happened in e-commerce since Internet has appeared. Today, lots of people are using the Internet to buy/ sell different types of products instead of traditional way. Also, more and more people want to start a new business in this area. Moreover, there are a lot of individuals that try to open startup e-businesses and they need to overcome the adoption problem with ICT technologies. Therefore, they will need consultancy in ICT adoption and improvement. Last but not least, the SMEs try to improve their business performance. As a result, they need to benefit more from using ICT and make it fully integrated with their services.
Most of the times when engineers try to solve or define problems there are dealing with problems that are well defined and have different and findable solutions. All these problems have a clear mission and it’s very understandable when a problem has a solution or no. However, not all the problems engineers are trying to address have all those clarifying traits, some of these problems have some malign properties, such as the problem may not be well defined, recognizable or easy to solve. Researchers refer to this group of problems as wicked problems. [1]
I don’t think that is the first time when we are confronting with wicked problems in our life, but is the first time when we have to recognize them and try to solve them. What does the term of wicked problem actually mean? Term wicked problem was defined first time by Horst W.J. Rittel and Melvin M. Webber in Dilemmas in General Theory of Planning paper, which was presented to the American Scientists in 1969.It was modified by authors in 1973. They are saying that “a Wicked Problem is a problem difficult or impossible to solve, because of the insufficient requirements that we have about it. Sometimes the existing requirements changes frequently and other times are contradictory. This makes it impossible to
Technology is moving very fast these days and lots of things have happened in e-commerce since Internet has appeared. Today, lots of people are using the Internet to buy/ sell different types of products instead of traditional way. Also, more and more people want to start a new business in this area. Moreover, there are a lot of individuals that try to open startup e-businesses and they need to overcome the adoption problem with ICT technologies. Therefore, they will need consultancy in ICT adoption and improvement. Last but not least, the SMEs try to improve their business performance. As a result, they need to benefit more from using ICT and make it fully integrated with their services.
Most of the times when engineers try to solve or define problems there are dealing with problems that are well defined and have different and findable solutions. All these problems have a clear mission and it’s very understandable when a problem has a solution or no. However, not all the problems engineers are trying to address have all those clarifying traits, some of these problems have some malign properties, such as the problem may not be well defined, recognizable or easy to solve. Researchers refer to this group of problems as wicked problems. [1]
I don’t think that is the first time when we are confronting with wicked problems in our life, but is the first time when we have to recognize them and try to solve them. What does the term of wicked problem actually mean? Term wicked problem was defined first time by Horst W.J. Rittel and Melvin M. Webber in Dilemmas in General Theory of Planning paper, which was presented to the American Scientists in 1969.It was modified by authors in 1973. They are saying that “a Wicked Problem is a problem difficult or impossible to solve, because of the insufficient requirements that we have about it. Sometimes the existing requirements changes frequently and other times are contradictory. This makes it impossible to
References: [1] Rittel, Horst, and Melvin Webber; "Dilemmas in a General Theory of Planning," Amsterdam, 1973, pp. 155–169 [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wicked_problem [3] ] http://www.leanessays.com/2002/01/wicked-problems.html