Wicked Problems. A wicked problem is a social or cultural problem that is difficult or impossible to solve for as many as four reasons: incomplete or contradictory knowledge, the number of people and opinions involved, the large economic burden, and the interconnected nature of these problems with other problems.
Surely you remember Iridium, Motorola Corporationâs $5 billion low-Earth-orbit debacle. Planned in the mid-1980s, the system was archaic by the time it was deployed in 1998, offering global communications from a brick-size, $3,000 phone at charges from $6 to $30 a minute.
On March 6, 1983 Motorola started selling DynaTAC 8000X, the first commercial portable cellular telephone, at a price of $3,995. The DynaTAC 8000X was truly the first mobile telephone which could connect to the telephone network without the assistance of a mobile operator and could be carried about by the user. It weighed 28 ounces (790 g) and was 10 inches (25 cm) high, not including its flexible rubber duck whip antenna.