Alternation of analysis and synthesis for concept generation

Abstract

Concept generation involves both analysis and synthesis activities interchangeably. In current practice, these two activities are often loosely defined and randomly performed. This paper presents a new method, called the Analysis Synthesis Alternation (ASA) approach, which treats concept generation as a proposition-making process and adapts the formal logic definitions of analytic and synthetic propositions to generate new concepts via two stages: ideation and validation. Both stages involve systemic alternations between analytic and synthetic propositions, but the alterations are performed in reverse reasoning directions. Experiment shows that ASA outperforms traditional brainstorming technique in both novelty and functionality.