Unicist Functional Design

The 10-Year Global Future Scenario of Objects driven Virtual Collaboration

 in The Unicist Research Institute / Unicist Cobots / Unicist Functional Design  tagged 10-Year Future Scenario Virtual Collaboration / Future Research / Intelligent Systems / Object Driven Organization / Objects driven Virtual Collaboration Trends / Organizational Trends / Peter Belohlavek / The Unicist Research Institute / Unicist Confederation / Unicist Evolutionary Approach / Unicist Future Research Lab / Unicist Standard by
Complementation

The reach of one’s globalization is defined
by the limit of the pronoun “WE”…

The 10-year Global Future Scenario of Objects driven Virtual Collaboration, developed by the Future Research Lab of The Unicist Research Institute and led by Peter Belohlavek, defines the trend towards this type of work organization when some of the following conditions are given:

  1. Extreme specialized solutions are needed
  2. There is a need for time saving
  3. There is a need for timing
  4. Transparency of work processes
  5. Reliability systems
  6. Customer orientation
  7. Quality assurance in work process

About Virtual Collaboration

The communication and IT technologies allowed making the next step in organizational design, integrating personal and virtual collaboration, organizing roles and using business objects, to maximize results and minimize costs.

This is a change in working habits that is extremely valuable to manage the adaptive aspects of businesses.

The virtual collaboration allows developing both internal and external work processes. The introduction of this technology needs to begin with the activity where the productivity increase is needed the most.

Relationship BuildingMarshall McLuhan said: “The Medium is the Message”. There is no doubt that virtual media are less powerful than in-person activities to build personal relationships. Therefore it is necessary to compensate this characteristic with an increase of functionality in the group dynamics.

Functionality is increased by using business objects (that introduce functional adaptive automation into the processes). The use of business objects driven work processes allows increasing the functionality of virtual collaboration processes and building a context of simplicity.

In order to achieve group synergy, it is required that the group follows a protocol that establishes the rules of actions and the distribution of credits for its members.

It has to be considered that the bond established between the members of a group is basic to provide a collaboration context that allows achieving synergy and thus increases the productivity.

The fundamentals of this bond are given by the complementation between the members, the functionality of each role and the personal link between the members.

The drivers of this trend are:

  1. The use of virtual collaboration at a personal level on Internet
  2. The massification of the use of Internet
  3. The use of virtual collaboration by many leading organization such a: Shell, IBM, Deloitte, Google, Cisco, etc.

The new technologies that sustain this trend:

  1. Cloud computing
  2. Audio/Video-conferencing
  3. Data-sharing
  4. Desktop-sharing
  5. Web-conferencing
  6. Imaging technologies
  7. Object Driven Organization
  8. Adaptive IT Solutions
  9. Client Centered Management

Where will Virtual Collaboration be installed as a standard within the next 10 years?

  1. Project Management
  2. Work Process Monitoring
  3. Home Office
  4. Research & Development
  5. Counseling/Coaching/Tutoring
  6. Business consulting
  7. Auditing
  8. IT R&D
  9. Virtual Negotiations
  10. B2B Marketing
  11. Buying Processes
  12. Business Monitoring
  13. Customer Support
  14. Auditing
  15. Corporate Universities
  16. Medical Consultations
  17. Medical Prevention
  18. Medical Monitoring
  19. Clinical Trials

To access the basics on Unicist Future Research please enter: www.unicist.org/sdp.shtml

Subjectivism is the killer of Virtual Collaboration

Subjectivism at work is the prevalence of subjective, ungrounded opinions, which prevail over any foundations that can be installed by a counterpart. Subjectivism implies the need of using distortive perceptions, denial and fallacies to avoid dealing with the actual problems.

Subjectivism is necessarily driven by manipulation which necessarily requires an extreme use of emotional influence to avoid dealing with the functional aspects of reality.

http://unicist.net/economics/manipulation-is-a-long-term-business-killer/

Therefore virtual collaboration requires working in functional environments where the roles of individuals are recognized by the results they can produce and their capacity of teamwork. Subjectivists can use virtual communication but not virtual collaboration.

What is needed to deal with Virtual Collaboration?

There are three aspects of organizations that need to be considered when installing virtual collaboration as a standard:

  1. Client Centered Management, to organize towards the satisfaction of customers and clients.
  2. Object Driven Organization, to use objects and personal roles to introduce functional adaptiveness in the processes.
  3. Adaptive IT solutions in order to provide a framework to sustain the efficacy of the participants.

1) Client Centered Management (CCM)

Client Centered ManagementCCM is a management model that was developed to establish the rules for an optimum use of the company’s energy so as to satisfy its internal and external clients. When talking about the external client in the company we necessarily refer to the customer and the shareholder. CCM is a meta-model to provide result-assurance, client orientation and secure added value to an organization. It is the natural model to expand businesses.

CCM is a paradigmatic adaptive system integrated by multiple business objects.

The core objects are:

1) The Unicist Reliability System

2) The Unicist Scorecard

3) The Unicist Quality Assurance System

The principles that integrate the CCM meta-model are:

1. Divide the processes into client-supplier units

This division aims at determining which operating units have a clear “output” so as to be suppliers and which have a clear “input” so as to be considered clients.

2. Minimize intermediaries

This principle follows the natural concept of “the larger the number of intermediaries, the bigger the entropy”.

3. Services or products received are paid for

This principle makes the organization become more aware of costs and benefits and enables negotiating goals to obtain measurable and predictable results.

Maximal Strategy

4. Each client has only one supplier

The principle that each client has only one supplier defines the role of the supplier which drives towards a solution driven approach and not only a task driven approach.

5. First giving, then receiving

It implies that services are paid for once rendered and not during the rendering process or in advance. There can be grounded exceptions to this in the organization.

6. Delivered out of time is considered undelivered

In practice, it ends up in an incentive system for each delivery on time and a punishment system if the dispatch is made out of time.

Minimum Strategy

7. Every client may change his supplier

The organization’s success is given by its capacity to satisfy the clients’ needs. This obliges the organization to manage the unfulfilled situations a supplier may have.

8. He who needs claims

“He who needs claims” is a principle based on the KANBAN approach which is closely associated with the natural tendency of satisfying one’s own needs.

9. Each supplier counts on his client’s trust

One of the basic principles of any successful large company is having a high reliability level. Reliability and trust are “sine qua non” principles for CCM’s application.

2) The Object Driven Organization

The unicist organizational approach is based on emulating nature in organizations. An extremely effective organization can be developed integrating both structural aspects that sustain evolution and incidental aspects that allow dealing with conjunctures. Emulating nature implies integrating the abstract apprehension of reality with the concrete operational design.

Object Driven OrganizationA unicist object driven organization is a result driven model that, according to the predefined objectives, designs the necessary processes and uses and reuses business objects to produce the expected results.

The object driven organization requires having a high level of maturity in business. It can be defined as the organization of processes and the use of objects to achieve the objectives that have been established in a strategy.

An object driven organization implies the development of a maximal strategy that includes the design of processes based on taxonomic procedures to put them into action and also a shared vision that makes these processes consistent with the business.

The vision of the organization is the catalyst of the minimum strategy. If it does not achieve its threshold, it works as an inhibitor of the minimum strategy and destroys the organization. The minimum strategy is based on the use and reuse of objects within the context of methodic procedures to ensure their use and functionality. This is sustained by an action plan (a “to do” list) to guarantee the fulfillment of the minimum strategy.

The use of business objects structures the timing and synchronicity of business processes. It also provides the necessary acceleration to achieve the needed critical mass and the required speed to adapt to the environment.

Types of Business Objects

There are five business objects which are: the drivers, the entropy inhibitors, the inhibitors, the catalysts and the gravitational objects.

Objects’ FunctionalityThe first three ones belong to the process of a system while the catalysts are part of the restricted context and the gravitational objects belong to the wide context of a system.

Objects can be designed integrating these three functions as part of their functionality or they can exist as three different objects to provide the driving, inhibiting and entropy inhibiting functions in a process.

Catalysts and gravitational objects are not part of the system. If one integrates them into the system, these objects do not work as such and destroy the system’s functionality.

The use of business objects requires individuals who understand the business processes in order to use the objects and replace them when their functionality has been exceeded

Unicist Business Objects are provided for the following uses:

–Driving Objects 
To drive processes

– Catalyzing Objects 
To accelerate processes

– Entropy Inhibiting Objects 
To inhibit the entropy of business processes

– Inhibiting Objects 
To inhibit dysfunctional events in a business

– Gravitational Objects 
To influence the results of processes

3) Adaptive IT Solutions

The available IT technologies made the development of adaptive systems meaningful. The objective of building adaptive systems is to integrate software, hardware and peopleware in adaptive work or business processes to assure the quality of the results produced.

Adaptive IT ArchitectureThe development of the adaptive IT  technology became possible because of the discovery of the unicist laws of evolution, the object driven organization that emulates the organization of nature and the drivers of human behavior that allow designing the necessary peopleware.

Before the existence of adaptive systems, the solution was fully focused on the efficacy of individuals, which increased the responsibility of the person who was doing a job. This forced individuals to consider all the details of the feedback from the environment which increased the probability of errors.

The catalyst of an adaptive IT system is its capacity to learn from the feedback to improve its adaptive structural behavior. The entropy inhibitor of the system is given by its capacity to learn to ensure conjunctural adaptiveness.

Adaptiveness is based on the existence of drivers that make it possible. There are different levels of adaptiveness beginning with the most basic and ending with the most flexible. The levels of the adaptive drivers are the following:

  1. There are analogical drivers that are based on the recognition of patterns.
  2. There are rule based drivers that include the preexisting and add rules that correspond to the activity.
  3. There are empirical drivers that include the preexisting and add empirical information obtained using mathematical models.
  4. There are objects based drivers that include the preexisting and add concept based objects as intrinsic adaptive systems.

The integration of the adaptive aspects with the operational and administrative aspects is necessary in order to develop user oriented information systems.

The level of adaptiveness of a system has to be designed according to the characteristics of a work process. Administrative and operational systems can be transformed into adaptive systems by adding and integrating an adaptive interface.

Quality Assurance: The Unicist Standard

The Unicist Standard was developed to sustain the application of the Unicist Logical Approach to Adaptive Systems Architecture and to the building of Unicist Business Objects.

The researches developed at The Unicist Research Institute allowed managing the unified fields of human complex adaptive systems in a reasonable, understandable and provable way.

The discoveries of the ontogenetic intelligence of nature, the anthropological invariables and their evolution, the human ontointelligence and the double dialectical behavior made the research & development and management of adaptive systems possible.

The Unicist Standard defines the ontogenetic maps that have to be followed in an adaptive system in order to structure it and achieve the results that have been defined as possible.

Conclusion

Virtual collaboration is the natural way to organize when there is a need of expert knowledge. Nowadays expert knowledge can be integrated in most of the cases by using the IT technologies that allow sharing data and images.

Collaborative ContextThe time saving and productivity increase is significant when the conditions for virtual collaboration are given. It allows providing full synchronicity with the needs of customers and clients.

But there are several requirements for virtual collaboration to be implemented:

  1. Virtual collaboration needs transparency of work become part of the culture of an organization.
  2. It needs reliability systems that monitor work processes.
  3. It requires customer orientation that fosters fulfillment, synchronicity and reliability.
  4. Personal roles need to be complemented by quality assurance processes to ensure results.

If you want to access more information about this study please contact n.i.brown@unicist.org

Unicist Press Committee

NOTE: The Unicist Research Institute was the pioneer in using the unicist logical approach in complexity science research and became a private global decentralized leading research organization in the field of human adaptive systems. It has an academic arm and a business arm. http://www.unicist-school.org/future-research/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/turi-1.pdf

 

The 10-Year Future Scenario of Global Consumer Markets

 in The Unicist Research Institute / Unicist Cobots / Unicist Functional Design  tagged 10 year Future Scenario of Global Consumer Markets / Economic growth / Future Research / Global Consumer Markets Trends / Intelligent Systems / Peter Belohlavek / Social Scenario / The Era of Empathic Adaptiveness / The Unicist Research Institute / unicist anthropology / Unicist Confederation / Unicist Corporate University / Unicist Evolutionary Approach / Unicist Future Research Lab / Unicist Logical Approach by

This is a synthesis of the future scenario development, led by Peter Belohlavek, that was triggered by the research on global behaviors www.unicist.org/research_project3_en.pdf and was upgraded due to the stagnation of the growth of countries in the EU since 2008. It included the following countries:  Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, England, France, Germany, India, Japan, Mexico, Spain, Sweden, USA and Venezuela.
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Consumers and clients were the victims of the XXth century

Dominant Economic Drivers

The reach of one’s globalization is defined
by the limit of the pronoun “WE”…

The XXth century was strongly influenced by the battle between capitalist consumerism and communist anti-consumerism. Paradoxically, both positions are the two faces of the same coin: the transformation of consumers into survivors which drove them towards over-adaptive behaviors and addictions.

Ideologies prevailed over functional behaviors. Capitalism used the myth of “design globally, operate locally” to justify their actions on markets while Communism brought about the theory of the “Superior Human Being” in order to justify their lack of productivity.

Consumers paid the bills which drove to side effects that were extremely functional for this period while the understanding of the functional needs of consumers was left aside and money driven or ideology driven manipulation prevailed.

The lack of knowledge to develop an empathic relationship with consumers inevitably made materialistic or ideological justifications prevail in decision making. The less an individual knows about the true drivers of consumers’ behavior the more he needs to use manipulation to influence.

The knowledge of the drivers of buying decisions and the possibility to develop predictive interfaces to build adaptive automation allowed leaving behind behaviorism that worked as a palliative for almost 100 years.

A turning point

This future scenario implies a turning point. It is a turning point to increase the level of empathic influence on the markets in order to increase the adaptiveness of commercial processes.

Paradoxically, this turning point is a consequence of the same drivers that led to the stagnation which now triggers the next step. This next step appears in a context of new technologies that allowed the development of automated adaptive solutions to build empathic approaches with consumers.

The drivers to the turning point were:

1)      Growth stagnation

2)      Unemployment

3)      Financial crises and the change of the role of banks as monetary circulation administrators

4)      The massification of social virtual networks

5)      The massification of personal communication

6)      The increase of individualism

The new technologies that made the turning point possible were:

  1. The discovery that in nature there only exist stable relationships based on complementation and supplementation opened a new perspective on the management of complex adaptive systems. It allowed managing the integration between consumers, products and providers, and confirming the validity of mathematic analyses of consumers’ behavior when complementation or supplementation had been confirmed.
  2. The discovery of the double dialectical logic that allows emulating the dynamic of consumers’ behavior.
  3. The development of commercial, semiotic and semantic objects to build empathic relationships with consumers.
  4. The discovery of the drivers of consumers’ actions that allowed developing the functional, psychological, conceptual and lifestyle segmentation.
  5. The development of adaptive automated IT solutions to manage markets
  6. The discovery of behavioral predictors and the development of predictive interfaces for IT solutions.
  7. The use of structured commercial communities.

What will have happened within the next 10 years?

The following aspects will be the standards in consumer market management within the next 10 years:

  1. The segmentation of potential customers – including the hard, functional, psychological, conceptual and lifestyle segmentation – will have been used as a standard based on observable predictors to influence consumers with a more empathic approach.
  2. Cross-cultural segmentation will have been used to manage adaptive empathic influence worldwide.
  3. Object Driven Marketing will be a standard marketing approach.
  4. The use of commercial catalysts will have been applied in all the cases where they work.
  5. Client Centered Management and Object Driven Organization will have become standards in business architecture.
  6. Co-marketing and commercial alliances will have been multiplied
  7. Brand management will have become significantly more important to build product/service synergy.
  8. Hyper-segmentation will have been used in all those niches where there is no direct relationship between the value of products and their variable costs.
  9. The social networks will have become a commercial channel for complementary and supplementary products/services
  10. The aesthetics of products/services, in the sense of completing clients’ needs, being desirable, harmonic and having unreachable aspects, will be the exclusive trigger to access the mind of the consumer.
  11. Customer Relationship Management Systems will have become adaptive automated solutions.
  12. Market Labs will be regularly used to monitor markets using predictive interfaces.

“Empathic adaptiveness is the name of the new era”

The paradoxical results of behaviorism

Behaviorism (John B. Watson) can be considered perhaps the earliest approach to complexity science considering human behavior as a complex system where the unique results subject to measurement are the observable behaviors of individuals. It was a functional palliative for empathic adaptiveness for almost 100 years.

The use of behaviorism to define adaptive actions to markets drove to the development of hard segmentations that are extremely simple to measure but at the same time have only a hypothetical relationship with the true drivers of the consumer’s actions. Statistics of results prevailed over the knowledge of the behavior of consumers.

A natural consequence of the use of behaviorism to segment markets, was the fact that people needed to use additional tools to influence the potential buyers. Manipulation became a professional disease of salesmen/women.

Manipulation is the palliative to avoid adapting

Thus psychopathic manipulation substituted de understanding of the buying processes transforming salesmen/women into forced manipulators because of their lack of knowledge of the buying drivers to influence the prospects.

See: http://unicist.net/economics/manipulation-is-a-long-term-business-killer/

How do buying processes work?

All buying processes imply the integration of emotions (desires), ideals or limits and conveniences. This integration varies depending on the needs that are being satisfied, the characteristics of the buyer and the characteristics of the seller.

Market SegmentationSimultaneously, there are different decision levels in the mind of the buyer. These are used consciously or unconsciously to make a buying decision.

These levels are interdependent complex systems that are integrated hierarchically and include the following aspects of the products or services: 1) the hard characteristics, 2) the functionality, 3) the role for the buyer, 4) the concept and 5) the social role.

Depending on the concept of the product/service, some of these levels can be considered as given or as limits to develop an empathic adaptive approach to the buyer. Every individual has a predefined position at each level which defines her/his segment.

Each segment is a universe in itself composed by those people who have similar structural beliefs in a buying process. This knowledge is used to build empathic relationships to influence the buying processes.

In the following lines, you will find a description of how these segmentations work in order to be used to increase the adaptiveness of the value propositions. There is no need to make a description of the hard characteristics of a product or service. That is why we start with the description of the functional segmentation.

Functional Segmentation

Functionality is defined as the capacity of something to fill an individual’s need. Functionality is homologous to aesthetics. When talking about functionality we refer to the perceived functionality which defines what we call the hard segmentation.

Functional SegmentationThe functional segments are:

Demythologizing

This segment considers the attributes of products without “anesthesia”. It eliminates apparent superfluous attributes not considering any complementation.

Attractive

The “Attractive” segment buys the products/services based on their hidden inaccessible attributes that make them attractive. This segment is a buyer of utopias. It often falls in the trap of over-promises.

Conventional

This segment perceives functionality based on benchmarking. This implies a classic approach with little space for unconventional attributes. It is a segment that buys classic functionality with little sophistication.

Conceptual

The conceptual segment seeks the essential complementation of the products and needs. This segment’s final approval occurs when the products/services are used.

Psychological Segmentation

It is the segmentation that defines the type of relation an individual has with a product/service. An individual adapts to reality within limits. Psychology established the limits of an individual’s context.

Psychological SegmentationPsychology defines the personal myths of individuals. Fallacious myths produce stereotypical behaviors. True myths describe human typologies.

The psychological segments are:

Emotive

This typology establishes emotional relations with products and services. These relations are naturally unstable. When “emotive” individuals are in the expansive cycle they establish pleasure-driven relations. When they are in the contractive cycle they establish a “child-child” relation with products.

Affective

The affective typology seeks stable caring relations with products and services. There is an implicit fear of abandonment. They cannot let go. When they are in the expansive cycle they establish interdependent relations. When they are in the contractive cycle they establish a “child-parent” relation with products.

Protective

“Protective” individuals protect the goods they buy. They care about them. When they are in the expansive cycle they establish dominant relations. When they are in the contractive cycle they establish a protective “mother-child” relation with the product. They need to possess products so they feel they are in charge of them.

Authoritative

They use products and services functionally and carefully. They respect the identity of objects. When they are in the expansive cycle they establish functional relations. When they are in the contractive cycle they establish a “father-child” relation with products. They change the products/services when they do not fulfill the implicit promises.

Conceptual Market Segmentation

The conceptual market segmentation describes the nature of a product as perceived by the market.

Conceptual market segmentation describes the concept implicit in a product or service, which is based on:

  1. Its purpose: being the final functional objective of the product/service as seen by a user.
  2. The procedure: being the verbal function that materializes the purpose in a concrete added value. This is the active function that necessarily produces entropy.
  3. The action guide: being the adverbial function that limits the actions of the procedure to ensure the fulfillment of the purpose of the product. This is the energy conservation function that limits the entropy of the verbal function.

Industrial AutomationAn application will illustrate this case through the conceptual segmentation of industrial process automation.

In this case, the purpose of the automation of an industrial process is defined as: Process Improvement.

The procedure or verbal function is the Automation itself, which generates entropy within this system.

The action guide or adverbial function is the Reliability of the system.

This conceptual market segmentation describes the nature of industrial process automation as perceived from its four segments: Technological Industry, Market-driven Industry, Professional Industry and Artisan Industry.

Unicist Anthropology: Lifestyle Segmentation

Lifestyle segmentation underlies human behavior. It establishes the parameters of normality and the “ethical mask” of a society. Describing the lifestyles of a country permits establishing the limits within which segmentations can work. Only in the case of basic human needs lifestyles are not a limit but only a gravitational force.

The unicist lifestyle segmentation is analogous to the VALS segmentation of SRI. But, while VALS uses psychology to segment people according to their distinct personality traits, Unicist Lifestyle Segmentation uses unicist anthropological invariables and country archetypes to segment people.

Unicist Lifestyles

Lifestyles are the archetypical behavior patterns of a society and its members. These archetypes serve a group as automatisms to carry out the everyday activities that are functional to that society’s purpose.

Lifestyle SegmentationHence, lifestyles are the result of the integration of a society’s collective unconscious with its archetype, which define different ways of facing reality.

Archetypes resolve the weaknesses of a social group by turning uncertainties into assertive answers which guarantee the success of individual and social purposes.

An individual’s lifestyle makes him acceptable and functional to the society’s needs. It also allows him to find groups of identification across different cultures or communities.

There are four main lifestyle types: “Artisan”, “Rationalist”, “Doer”, and “Innovator”.

These four lifestyles have two sub-styles:

1) One sub-style for stable or evolution stages

2) One sub-style for unstable or involution stages

Whether a society is in a stable or unstable situation or in an evolution or involution process is ultimately subjective, and results from the perception of the collective unconscious.

The lifestyle segments are:

Artisans

The Artisans live within the beliefs of a culture, relate subjectively and develop their activity based on individual efforts and significant utopias. When they are expanding, they exercise pressure to introduce new ideas within a communitarian approach. When they try to avoid contraction, they seek individual benefits.

Rationalists

The Rationalists approach reality based on judgments that make them feel dominant in their area. They are brand and image-driven and use their analytical approach to understand reality. They align based on rational ideas. When they are expanding, they align within the values of a culture. When they try to avoid contraction, they justify their individual values to adapt.

Doer

The “Doers” are driven by the values of a culture. They do what is necessary to fulfill the needs of a group. They are added value-driven and their goal is to be recognized as a VIP. When they are expanding, they add value to obtain a materialistic and spiritual benefit. When they try to avoid contraction, they add value to dominate.

Innovators

They are driven by leading through innovation. They are risk takers and idealist. They usually try to materialize new utopias. When Innovators are driven by expansion, they add value based on generating new ideas. On the other hand, materialistic creations are their way to avoid contraction.

Conclusion:
The Era of Empathic Adaptiveness

The use of functional, psychological, conceptual and lifestyle segmentations allows building empathic adaptive relationships with the market. There is no need to manipulate when people are understood.

Universal Market SegmentationThe era for expansive market actions has begun. There is lots of room for small companies who do not have the capacity or possibility to expand. Manipulation will remain a natural attitude in marketing processes in spite of its paradoxical side effects.

Expansiveness implies necessarily going beyond the boundaries of the present business. It might imply expanding in width or in depth. In both cases there is a need to understand the segments that are aimed at. This understanding implies being able to model their behavior in order to use the information to design value propositions and communication.

The understanding of the different levels that participate in a buying decision help to achieve this goal and also provides the information to build commercial, semiotic and semantic objects to influence the market.

“Design globally, operate locally” has been a motto for many years. Now it became true using segmentation and commercial, semiotic and semantic objects adequately.

This approach allows upgrading the databases by integrating universal market segmentations that allow increasing notoriously the productivity of their results.

The building of functional commercial communities is meaningless without having a true segmentation of the participants.

The 10 year Future Scenario of Global Consumer Markets,
defined as the era “Empathic Adaptiveness” is already here and has three names:
“Design, Segmentation & Adaptive Automation”

If you want to access more information about this study please contact n.i.brown@unicist.org

Unicist Press Committee

NOTE: The Unicist Research Institute was the pioneer in complexity science research and became a private global decentralized leading research organization in the field of human adaptive systems.
http://www.unicist.org

The 10-Year Scenario for Superior Education in Business

 in The Unicist Research Institute / Unicist Cobots / Unicist Functional Design  tagged 10-Year Scenario for Superior Education / Behavior of elites / Diana Belohlavek / Educational models / Fundamental Analysis / Intelligent Systems / Learning process / Peter Belohlavek / Social Scenario / Superior Education / The Unicist Research Institute / Unicist Corporate University / Unicist Education / Unicist Evolutionary Approach / Unicist Future Research Lab / Unicist Logical Approach / Unicist Theory of Evolution by

This future research process was developed as a consequence of the economic crisis that was triggered in 2008. The purpose of the research, led by Peter Belohlavek, was to find the human aspects that participated in the crisis and how education could have helped to anticipate it and/or accelerate the recovery.

The research included participants of 10 countries. The final objective of this research was to develop a reliable 10-year future scenario for Superior Education.

To access the basics on Unicist Future Research please enter:
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The Era of the “Know Why” and Adaptiveness

The reach of one’s globalization is defined
by the limit of the pronoun “WE”…

Superior Education is defined as the activity that deals with the acquisition of knowledge to manage the complex adaptive aspects of the environment.

It requires having the technologies, tools and approaches to:

  1. Develop reliable future forecasts
  2. Design the necessary maximal and minimum strategies
  3. Build the architectures that are needed to make things happen

What has changed in the environment?

  1. The speed of technological development has increased
  2. Information technology made most of the operational and administrative aspects of business manageable
  3. Information became accessible to everyone on the Internet
  4. The speed of technological evolution and the saturation of information increased the level of complexity to manage businesses

Which technologies appeared?

  1. The double dialectical logic to explain the dynamics of complex problems
  2. The business objects driven technologies to manage adaptive processes
  3. Future research methodologies to forecast the environment that made predictive adaptive systems feasible.

What will have happened within the next 10 years?

In ten years the following aspects will probably be the standard for Superior Education:

  1. Logical approaches will have replaced mechanical approaches to solve complex problems
  2. Future forecasting will have become a must for business planning
  3. Dynamic education will have replaced static education
  4. Virtual education will be dominant
  5. Educational processes will be fully learning driven
  6. Complex problem solving will have replaced thematic education
  7. Teachers’ role will be focused on “expert counseling”

This can be synthesized in one sentence:

The “know why” and adaptiveness will be the core of Superior Education. 

Introduction

Educational models respond naturally to the needs, archetypes and lifestyles of cultures and their development. The changes in superior education should be guiding the changes of cultures but, unfortunately, mostly they are a consequence of the changes of cultures.

It can be noticed that the changes in education happen extremely slowly because the standards of the educational systems are implicitly established by the patterns of parents, teachers and educational authorities.

Unicist Educational Model

The most influential aspects of educational systems is what we have named the superior education which deals with the knowledge that goes beyond the necessary professional skills needed to work. Superior education is based on programs that are prepared to form the professional elite.

While the educational models at a superior level have been strongly driven by teaching the operational and technical aspects of a field, the IT driven tools evolved allowing automating or semi-automating the work processes which made the knowledge acquired redundant with the knowledge included in the IT solutions.

This change happened while the educational system maintained its inertia using the necessary dualistic approach to deal with operational and technical-analytical approaches.

Static vs. Dynamic Learning Processes

The superior education in business management provided an empirical operational and analytical framework for business management that upgraded professionalism in the XXth century.

The static empirical model that permitted administrating businesses provided the knowledge that allowed developing the necessary information technology that become redundant with the superior educational programs. Simultaneously, the explosive R&D capacity to release new products shortened their lifecycle.

These two situations, the redundancy of operational an analytical knowledge and the acceleration of business processes, made the static empirical approach to business become functional to business operation but dysfunctional to business management.

This scenario opened new demands for superior education in businesses that are still unsatisfied.

These new demands imply going beyond empirical approaches and providing technologies that allow managing the adaptive dynamics of businesses which require being able to forecast the future, build strategies to achieve this future and design the necessary business architecture to make the future happen.

The development of the unicist double dialectical logic and its rules provided the basic tools that allow dealing with the adaptive dynamics of businesses to build future scenarios, diagnoses, strategies and business architecture.

About Static Learning Processes

A synthetic description of static learning processes allows understanding the difference between dealing with reality as an adaptive system or managing it as a stagnated reality.

Dualistic logic and the traditional dialectical approach naturally drive towards static learning. Dualistic logic is based on the disjunction “or”, which allows fixing reality with an arbitrary approach.

This allows learning operational methods and using analytical thinking to understand them. But this approach generates parallel realities when dealing with complex adaptive systems.

The final purpose is to have valid knowledge in the long term memory which is based on the operational knowledge and to have the knowledge of cause-effect relationships which provides the causal foundations of this knowledge.

The static learning process drives to sustain personal opinions which allow dealing with systemic aspects of reality where the technical-analytical knowledge is being fully managed. This knowledge is valid as long as the reality has not changed. That is why we talk about static equilibrium.

This learning process is based on what has been named “pseudo accommodation” which is based on assuming the role of an “observer” of reality and managing the projections on the environment as valid information.

It allows building hypothetical knowledge that confirms the opinions of the learner. It is the typical accumulative learning considering the external reality as an observable environment that can be influenced through cause-effect actions.

The static learning process is the natural learning standard in over-adapted environments that are driven by domination, submission and opposition of the members.

The confirmation of the knowledge is based on using fallacious confirmation processes which are based on the projection of apparent facts and hypothetical ideas to confirm the beliefs of the participants.

These beliefs allow confirming the opinions of the learners which are the core of the static knowledge that can be acquired in static learning processes.

1) Static Equilibrium

The use of dualistic logic, based on the confrontation of positions, using the disjunction “or” to deal with reality, drives individuals to a static equilibrium where their opinions prevail.

Dualistic thinking, following the natural behavior of neurons, is the less energy consuming thinking process.

This drives naturally towards an over-adaptive behavior which implies submitting, dominating or opposing to the environment.

Static Learning ProcessDualistic logic generates naturally aprioristic fallacies to deal with the environment which allows individuals to build a parallel reality that works as a comfort zone where they have no need of adapting. Domination, submission and oppositions are the alternatives they manage to feel safe.

Dualistic dialectics, like the ones of Hegel and Marx, provide the justification of the actions of individuals, apparently proposing a change but in fact remaining in a static equilibrium.

The positive aspect is that static equilibrium allows managing reality as a systemic model based on cause-effect relationships although complexity cannot be apprehended.

Static equilibrium is necessary to deal with methods and supernatural and religious thinking. That is why the basic educational system is based on teaching static processes in order to allow people to access the world of work.

Dealing with Dynamic Learning Processes

Reliable Knowledge: The Objective of Learning Processes in Dynamic Environments

Reliable KnowledgeKnowledge becomes reliable when it has the necessary adaptiveness so the individual can deal with reality in a dynamic equilibrium.

The knowledge is adaptive when it allows apprehending reality as a complex adaptive system and the individual is able to transform knowledge into actions, understanding the consequences based on its foundations.

The development of actions requires knowing the fundamentals of what someone is doing. The knowledge of the fundamentals is required to do things. Technical-analytical knowledge allows controlling the cause-effect relationships after the actions were implemented.

Reliability is based on the integration of the knowledge of the fundamentals, the technical-analytical knowledge and the possibility to adapt to the environment.

2) Dynamic Equilibrium

Dynamic equilibrium implies adapting to reality which implies a permanent accommodation process in order to generate the necessary complementation or supplementation with the environment.

Dynamic Learning ObjectsDynamic equilibrium requires using the double dialectical logic to approach reality which is based on the conjunction “and” without the existence of disjunctions. This allows individuals to influence the environment while they are being influenced by it.
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It requires having a structural approach in order to be able to apprehend the fundamentals of reality and a functional approach in order to measure them in terms of results. In a dynamic equilibrium environment things are not true or false, but functional or dysfunctional.

Dynamic equilibrium requires dealing with reality as a complex adaptive system. This implies that the structure of the complex adaptive system, defined by a purpose, an active function and an energy conservation function, needs to be apprehended.

This apprehension requires the use of the double dialectical logic which demands using the unicist double dialectical thinking. This approach allows apprehending complex adaptive systems in their nature and transforming them into systemic systems making the necessary compromises without leaving aside their essential structure while measuring the results that are being achieved.

Conclusion: “Know why” and Adaptiveness are the Next Step

The unicist logical approach allows driving businesses to the next level increasing their adaptiveness and speed of actions to improve results measured in growth and profits.

Superior Education in BusinessThis implies that the superior education has to move from the “know how” approach to the inclusion of the “know why” as a driver of learning processes.

It has to be considered that there are cultures where the question “why” is socially non-acceptable because it provides full transparency, that defines the limits of an individual’s influencing capacity. In these cultures superior education is, from now on, a question of status and not of knowledge.

It also has to be considered that adaptiveness implies, besides reacting, forecasting the future and also influencing it. But in some cultures the future is a “taboo” which makes the acceptance of the credibility of reliable future scenarios impossible.

As these cultures are natural followers, their superior education cannot include aspects that deal with adaptiveness. This implies that the next step that has been defined is only applicable to cultures that accept their capacity to influence the future in an adapted way.

Anyway and anyhow this change process will demand decades and will be catalyzed by the individual initiatives of institutions and corporations that decide to make it on their own.

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NOTE: The Unicist Research Institute was the pioneer in complexity science research and became a private global decentralized leading research organization in the field of human adaptive systems. http://www.unicist.org