Idea Generation in Abductive Thinking: Not One but Three Approaches

The article distinguishes between the three idea generation approaches for abductive thinking identified by Sætre and Van de Ven. They treated “disciplined imagination”, “hunches”, and “serendipitous insights” as synonymous modes of generative reasoning that yield identical alternative explanations. We explain that the three approaches vary in the nature of the underlying processes, novelty of plausible explanations, and the likely theoretical contribution.