In IT, we're awash in "solutions." For nearly any problem, from the technical to the business challenge, there's a product that purports to offer a solution for that specific challenge. Even our various vendors and suppliers talk about solutions, providing their people with classes in "solution selling" to drive the point home that identifying a specific problem and offering a product or service to address that problem is the right approach.
Contrast a solutions mindset with systems thinking, where the "system" refers to not only the technology, but business processes, customers, and the underlying market. Systems thinking considers how all these different elements of a system interact, and then identifies ways to optimize the overall system, versus solutions to a specific problem within that system.
