Management consulting first exposed me to issue trees / logic trees and Minto’s pyramid principles. Although I liked the tools, I also felt that consultants weren’t using them fully. So for the past fifteen years I’ve been investigating problem-solving epistemology, both on the theoretical and practical sides. Because problem solving is so prevalent in our lives, many disciplines deal with it: management, engineering, psychology, medicine, philosophy, architecture, … They all approach it from a different perspective; my interest is to break these silos and make the material available to all and distill it away so that it’s understandable and practical.

As a result, my approach is highly practical.

For instance, in my course at Rice each student brought a problem. I introduced them to theoretical concepts that we then applied to these problems and we used those as case studies. Students came from all departments, and we leveraged this diversity to enrich the group’s problem-solving capabilities.

Through my research and the hundreds of cases that I’ve seen with my students, we’ve adapted the strategy consultancies’ tools: we’ve made them more evidence based, more creative, more logical still, and easier to use. This website gives a glimpse of what we do, and I hope it is useful to you.