Everyone gets stuck in situations when the otherwise useful abstractions they are employing cease to be adequate for what they are trying to do. At the concrete level there exist countless latent possibilities which are often masked by the mid-level abstractions with which all of us tend to operate. The real challenge is how to reveal—and realize—those latent possibilities.

Rather than seeking to construct ad hoc models of complex practical situations, we sought to develop ways to filter the complexity out of the equation in a non-reductionistic way, that would pinpoint the catalytic actions required to flip things from the existing, problematic situation to the desired outcome, in one hit.

Instead of following the lead of the so-called systems sciences or the social sciences, we followed the lead of the natural sciences. And instead of keeping reality at a distance (by working with the surrogate reality afforded by maps and models and mid-level abstractions), Interchange Research sought to find ways of applying scientific knowledge and methods in the way they are applied in the natural sciences: namely, by working directly with pieces of the real world in a close and delicate manner.

The successful development of such methods required us to go back to first principles and re-examine the very foundations of modern science, along with a host of technical, logical and philosophical issues concerning its current practice.

Drawing upon a rich variety of sources—some as old as Bacon, the father of modern science, and others at the very frontiers of contemporary scientific exploration—we were able to construct new foundations for scientific analysis, whose radical implications, we believe, have hardly begun to be tapped.

A new approach, empirical and rigorous, was then constructed on these freshly fortified logical foundations. With its novel concepts and analytical methods, this new approach proved suitable for application to everyday life and the complexities of practical affairs.