What are the roles of inductive thinking and deductive thinking in Business Process Innovation?

Inductive reasoning makes broad generalizations from specific observations. , we go from the specific to the general. We make many observations, discern a pattern, make a generalization, and infer an explanation or a theory and that helps the business in planning broad strategy that fits a general role of expansion or marketing and even sales.

Deductive reasoning is a basic form of valid reasoning. Deductive reasoning, or deduction, starts out with a general statement, or hypothesis, and examines the possibilities to reach a specific logical conclusion and that can be used when a problem occurs in business but not very useful for planning.

Inductive reasoning is a logical process in which multiple premises, all believed true or found true most of the time, are combined to obtain a specific conclusion. Inductive reasoning is often used in decision making involve prediction, forecasting, or behavior. 

Deductive reasoning is a logical process in which a conclusion is based on the concordance of multiple premises that are generally assumed to be true.  Deductive reasoning is sometimes referred to as top-down management approach. Its counterpart, inductive reasoning, is sometimes referred to as bottom-up logic. Where deductive reasoning proceeds from general premises to a specific conclusion, inductive reasoning proceeds from specific premises to a general conclusion. 

If we apply this concept  to Innovation Leadership It Has Two Components

1.     An innovative approach to leadership. This means to bring new thinking and different actions to how you lead, manage, and go about your work. How can you think differently about your role and the challenges you and your organization face? What can you do to break open entrenched, intractable problems? How can you be agile and quick in the absence of information or predictability?

2.     Leadership for innovation. Leaders must learn how to create an organizational climate where others apply innovative thinking to solve problems and develop new products and services. It is about growing a culture of innovation, not just hiring a few creative outliers. How can you help others to think differently and work in new ways to face challenges? What can be done to innovate when all resources are stressed and constrained? How can you stay alive and stay ahead of the competition?

Business Thinking Versus Innovative Thinking

Today’s managers are not lacking ideas, theories, or information. They have extraordinary knowledge and expertise. They are skilled practitioners of traditional business thinking. Business thinking is based on deep research, formulas, and logical facts. Deductive and inductive reasoning are favored tools, as we look for proof or precedent to inform decisions. Business thinkers are often quick to make decisions, looking for the right answer among the wrong answers. Business thinking is about removing ambiguity and driving results.

But ambiguity cannot be managed away. Driving results is impossible when the situation is unstable or the challenge is complex or the direction is unclear. Many of today’s leadership problems are critical and pressing; they demand quick and decisive action. But at the same time, they are so complex that we can’t just dive in. Because the organization, team, or individual does not know how to act, there is a need to slow down, reflect, and approach the situation in an unconventional way— using innovative thinking. Innovative thinking is not reliant on past experience or known facts. It imagines a desired future state and figures out how to get there. It is intuitive and open to possibility. Rather than identifying right answers or wrong answers, the goal is to find a better way and explore multiple possibilities. Ambiguity is an advantage, not a problem. It allows you to ask “what if?” Innovative thinking is a crucial addition to traditional business thinking. It allows you to bring new ideas and energy to your role as leader and to solve your challenges. It also paves the way to bring more innovation into your organization.

” Innovative thinking is a crucial addition to traditional business thinking. It allows you to bring new ideas and energy to your role as leader and to solve your challenges. It also paves the way to bring more innovation into your organization.

Six Innovative Thinking Skills Designers ask questions such as: How do we make something beautiful and usable? How does it mechanically go together? How do we reflect the brand? Leaders ask questions such as, What are we trying to achieve and why? How do we accomplish our goals? What people and resources do we need to make it happen? By weaving together the leadership process with the design process, CCL and Continuum have identified six innovative thinking skills. Using these skills, organizations are able to create something that is useful and desirable—whether it’s a breakthrough technology, a valuable service, or a fresh solution to an old problem.

Each of these skills shifts your understanding of a situation and opens the door for new approaches and solutions.

1. Paying attention. First impressions and assumptions are not the whole picture, so they don’t lead to an accurate assessment or best solution. Paying attention is the ability to notice what has gone unnoticed. It is about looking more deeply at a situation, being a clear-eyed observer, perceiving details, and seeing new patterns. Paying attention begins with slowing down, temporarily, in order to be more deliberate in grasping the situation. Consider different points of view and multiple inputs. Literally look and listen from a new perspective.

2. Personalizing. At work, we tend to undervalue individual, personal experience. The practice of personalizing elevates it, seeking insight from the human experience. For innovative thinking, personalizing is a twofold process: tapping into our own broad scope of knowledge and experience, and understanding our customer in a deep, personal way. The ability to tap into (seemingly unrelated) personal experiences and passions introduces fresh perspectives on challenges. Personalizing draws on your interests, hobbies, or avocation and applies them to work. Consider how ideas, patterns, or strands of insight from the whole of your life might contribute to your work. For example, a manager may find that her experience as a musician helps her to orchestrate and communicate the varying pace and intensity of her team’s long-term product development. The customer side of personalizing is the ability to understand your customer in a full and real way: Who are you reaching? What matters to them? What don’t you know? Personalizing requires you to interact with customers in their environment. It pushes you to understand who they are and how they live. Deep customer knowledge leads to the new ideas, patterns, and insights that fuel innovation.

3. Imaging. Imaging is a tool to help you process information. Words by themselves are usually not enough for making sense of complexity or vast amounts of information. Imagery is a very good way to take it in and make sense of it. Pictures, stories, impressions, and metaphors are powerful tools for describing situations, constructing ideas, and communicating effectively. Using your imagination to answer the question “what if?” can lead to extraordinary images and possibilities.

4. Serious play. Business thinking and routine work can become a rigid process. Innovation requires bending some rules, branching out, having some fun. When you generate knowledge and insight through nontraditional ways—free exploration, improvisation, experimentation, levity and rapid prototyping, limit testing—work feels like play but the results are serious business.

5. Collaborative inquiry. Innovations are rarely made by a “lone genius.” Insights come through thoughtful, nonjudgmental sharing of ideas. Collaborative inquiry is a process of sustained, effective dialogue with those who have a stake in the situation. Drawing on a variety of stakeholders and points of view can contribute to the complexity, but it is also the source of much opportunity. The focus involves asking searching questions and exercising critical thinking without always expecting immediate answers.

6. Crafting. F. Scott Fitzgerald once said, “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in the mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.” Innovation requires us to shed either/or thinking and see the whole as inclusive of opposition and open to a third (or fourth or fifth) solution. The practice of crafting allows us to live with and resolve paradox and contradiction. Unlike the traditional analysis of business thinking— which requires us to break down problems into separate pieces, known facts, and current assumptions— crafting is about synthesis, integration, and possibility. Through what is called abductive reasoning, we can make intuitive connections among seemingly unrelated information and begin to shape order out of chaos.

Inductive reasoning is a logical process in which multiple premises, all believed true or found true most of the time, are combined to obtain a specific conclusion. Inductive reasoning is often used in applications that involve prediction, forecasting, or behavior.

Deductive reasoning is a logical process in which a conclusion is based on the concordance of multiple premises that are generally assumed to be true. Deductive reasoning is sometimes referred to as top-down logic. Its counterpart, inductive reasoning, is sometimes referred to as bottom-up logic.

Why Process Innovation?

Process innovations increase bottom-line profitability, reduce costs, improve efficiency, improve productivity, and increase employee job satisfaction. They also deliver enhanced product or service value to the customer.

Focus Areas

Process innovations focus on building an adaptive business process management system (BPMS). For manufacturing companies, process innovation include such things as integrating new production methods and technologies that lead to improved efficiency, quality, or time-to-market, and services that are sold with those products. For service companies, process innovations enable them to introduce "front office" customer service improvements and add new services.

New Wave of Business Process Management)

Enterprise-wide business process management (EBPM), the third-wave of business process management, and new business process management systems (BPMS) are expected to transform the way companies conceive, build and operate automated systems. Its methods transforms the traditional functional mindset of corporate executives and employees and help

companies develop the capabilities they need to fully manage their processes. The innovation is in the end-to-end way processes are presented and the way technologies interact with them. This unified framework provides an opportunity to return to a more centralized model of computing in order to achieve process coherence across the business. "The radical breakthrough is that in the third wave, business processes are directly and immediately executable - no software development needed!".

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I agree with the answer given by Mr.Rami!

Inductive thinking is a Method of reasoning from particular to general; the mental process involved in creating generalizations from the observed phenomenon or principles. With analogy and deductive reasoning, it constitutes the three basic tools of thinking. Once we talk about business process innovation you need to use this tool in order to evaluate what is right till today, what goes wrong need to replace and what require to improve the situation.

Deductive thinking is a Method of reasoning from general to particular, it is employed in deriving general laws or principles from the observed phenomenon. With analogy and inductive reasoning, it constitutes the three basic modes of thinking. It’s a conservative approach however based on the business type works as well.

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full agree with answer given by mr. Rami Abbas 

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