Abstract

That the present day society profits from research in many areas is evident. This has stimulated a keen desire to emulate similarly advantageous contributions in other areas. It appears to imply not only a need to know how to (better) support action in general or any action, but also how to support the act of making "better" itself (better businesses, better houses, better emotions, better objectives, etc.). Developing the latter type of knowledge has proved to pose a major challenge, however. Although the challenge has been taken up in areas such as social policy, economics, therapy, management, architecture, design, and others, leading to a number of responses, a complete characterisation seems still to be lacking. Such a characterisation is attempted in this article. Typical characteristics are the inclusion of non-observational experiences and a simultaneous striving for individual and collective high quality