Framing the Intractable: Comprehensive Success Factor Analysis for Grand Challenges

Area of Science:

• Socio-technical systems analysis
• Problem framing methodologies
• Knowledge organization

Background:

• Existing methods for framing complex socio-technical challenges (grand challenges/wicked problems) are inadequate.
• Reductionist approaches oversimplify, while holistic methods lack systematicity and can be biased.
• A need exists for a robust, systematic, and inclusive method for holistic problem framing.

Purpose of the Study:

• To introduce and validate Comprehensive Success Factor Analysis (CSFA), an extended holistic problem framing technique.
• To demonstrate CSFA's ability to generate richer, more comprehensive pictures of grand challenges.
• To provide a systematic framework for understanding and addressing complex socio-technical issues.

Main Methods:

• CSFA integrates web-mined information from expert and general populations.
• It utilizes pattern-informed ontological knowledge organization structures.
• The method emphasizes multiple levels of abstraction, diverse perspectives, contextualization, and a system view.

Main Results:

• CSFA yields 'success factor trees' offering a more comprehensive and holistic view of complex problems.
• The method was refined over seven years across various socio-technical challenges.
• Application to 'food security' in low- to middle-income countries demonstrated superior scope, abstraction levels, plurality, and context detail compared to existing literature.

Conclusions:

• CSFA provides a robust framework for framing complex socio-technical challenges, exceeding current methods.
• Success factor trees facilitate collaboration, informed resource allocation, and solution design.
• The approach addresses limitations of reductionist and less systematic holistic framing techniques.