Sequencing Apple's DNA

Appendix 5Tips on Deepening Understanding by Using Trialectics

“Uniting without confusing and distinguishing without separating.”

The trialectics motto

A5.1. Introducing trialectics

This appendix introduces a ternary methodology of thought processes, named “trialectics", as a tool for deepening the multidimensional understanding of any concept. It was conceived by Gérard Gigand [GIG 15] over several years and is used in various environments ranging from executive coaching to professional consulting. Trialectics is useful to deepen the understanding of the innovation intensity at Apple.

We position trialectics as a genuine methodology (method of methods) with two essential properties:

1) It proposes a systematic ternary thinking approach to perform conceptual variations and expansions relatively to three fundamental and generic invariants: incompleteness, auto-reference and indeterminacy.

2) It helps formulating systemic concepts that clarify the expression of the initial concept.

Trialectics supports the development of C-K diagrams further, especially enhancing originality and variety when exploring the concepts in the C space. For doing so, we target the two terms, “competitiveness” and “innovativeness", whose diagrams are elaborated in Chapters 17 and 18, for approaching specific features pertaining to Apple’s capacity under these two keystone fields of operations. Ours is a unique approach to know what can be understood in a motto such as “think different” in deeper ways. ...