In this method, new solutions and approaches are found by removing (abstracting) the challenge, i.e. by changing the perspective or the point of view. This technique, whose conception goes back in the origin to Horst Geschka, pursues essentially two cognitive goals:
1) Working out the relationships between a given challenge and the problem solver’s goal system.
2) Identify the level of action at which solutions make the most efficient contributions to achieving goals.
Progressive abstraction exercises a control, as it were, over whether the provisional definition of the challenge captures the really essential, problematic facts or whether views cannot be found that suggest even more fundamental and also more far-reaching solutions.
This involves several stages of formulation in an attempt to move from possibly superficial and imprecise perceptions of the challenge to more precise, goal-related core definitions. Progressive Abstraction is also excellent when it comes to further developments and reformulations of products and also services.