Why Should We Follow and Innovate Methodologies?

Get curious about innovative methodologies with Adolfo Espíritu as he applies his curiosities about methodologies in the first part of a new series on methodologies, curiosity, and more for the Corporation of Tomorrow.

Methodologies are systematic approaches which aim to solve a set of problems. For example, mathematics has developed abstract objects like numbers and algebraic structures to operate with them, giving as a result a practical tool, which can be used to understand the nature, or measure of how a business is doing.

As seen, the same tool has multiple uses, so it can deal with a huge variety of problems. Systematic approaches have their advantages, disadvantages, and limitations when applied to deliver the solution because they were thought for solving a specific set of problems, so it is important to know under which assumptions the method was made and how it works; because these can cause flaws in your result if not considered and dealing with them opens an opportunity for improvement. By generalizing and solving them, systematic means are created, which can reliably be used to approach a wide variety of similar problems to the general one thus, enabling us to discover new problems and combine them to deliver better solutions.

The best methodologies are the ones which combine simple ideas and solve complex problems, so it is important to always think for the easiest solution when trying to tackle a challenge. For example, in math it is common to approach a problem through the Divide and Conquer approach, which divides the main problem into smaller problems, they are solved, and the general solution is made by gathering the smaller resolutions. There is another approach which consists in making an image problem of the original one (see it through other lenses) (this can be seen in Integral Transforms Methods), solve the problem from this other viewpoint, and finally translate the solution to the original point of view.

My best tip here is to think: how would someone who does not know about any particular method solve the problem? In other words, stop "knowing" and approach the problem through the eyes of a child, combined with how a lazy expert would go about solving it, because these approaches force you to find the simplest solution.

It is important to improve our methods because each systematic approach has a cost, whether is time or quality, and the ideal scenario is to have approaches which are highly reliable and have a low time cost.

In conclusion, having more recipes we have for solving problems implies getting reliable solutions in less time, and they also let us see new problems that were not thought before, which become opportunities.

Can a methodology for solving any problem can be developed? Stay tuned to find out.

Adolfo Arana Espíritu Santo is a student at the Monterrey Institute of Technology & Higher Learning and loves getting curious about, Math, Physics, and Quantum Computers.

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