science

High-touch

High-touch is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand High-touch rather than just read about it. In short: High-touch refers to the involvement of personal attention and service. In business, the term often refers to situations where trust between the customer and employed individual(s) is necessary.

Key takeaways

High-touch belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect High-touch to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of High-touch from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

High-touch refers to the involvement of personal attention and service. In business, the term often refers to situations where trust between the customer and employed individual(s) is necessary. High-touch areas include: medicine, wealth management, reference desk, real estate, and legal. Stock trading done by humans, as opposed to automated trading or using online brokers, is also referred to as high-touch.

Origins The term was coined in 1982 by John Naisbitt in his book Megatrends. It was explored further by Naisbitt in his follow-up book High Tech/High Touch.

In medicine High-touch may also refer to the frequency in which a surface is touched. In pharmacology, high-touch may refer to medicines that require temperature control, ongoing drug management, or compliance monitoring.

Relation to high tech High-touch was coined as a term in response to "high tech". High tech, as opposed to high-touch, is when customers don't need human interaction to perform activities such as onboarding, ordering, and account management. High tech services, such as chatbots, allow customers to get what they want on-demand.

References

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with High-touch

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what High-touch claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to High-touch before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about High-touch ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of High-touch

In research: High-touch appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses High-touch in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: High-touch is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Business terms, Vocabulary and usage stubs, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for High-touch outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study High-touch in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what High-touch means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain High-touch out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is High-touch in simple terms?

High-touch refers to the involvement of personal attention and service. In business, the term often refers to situations where trust between the customer and employed individual(s) is necessary.

Why does High-touch matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study High-touch?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on High-touch.