Analysis of a system reveals its structure and how it works. It provides the knowledge required to make it work efficiently and to repair it when it … - Russell L. Ackoff

The synthetic mode of thought, when applied to systems problems, is called the systems approach. In this approach a problem is not solved by taking it apart but by viewing it as a part of a larger problem.

Because we cannot yet (1) characterize all the possible experimental designs along quantitative scales and (2) generate cost-of-error functions, comparisons must be made in specific contexts rather than by use of analytic optimizing.

In the spring of 1951 Churchman and I accepted appointments to (then) Case Institute of Technology in Cleveland because Case was committed to establishing an activity in Operations Research and Churchman and I had come to believe we could probably work better under this name than under the cloak of academic philosophy. By the end of 1952 we had formal approval, but not without faculty opposition, for the first doctoral program in Operations Research. From then on the Group and the program grew rapidly and flourished. Case became a mecca to which pilgrimages of operations researchers from around the world came. In 1958, Churchman, for personal reasons, migrated to the University of California at Berkeley where he established a similar activity. Academic Operations Research activities began to proliferate and flourish, many of them modeled on those at Case.