The core problem of all businesses — understanding reality
spacetime optimization economy
A successful business is one that understands best the reality it is evolving in. The ones that understand it the better are the one that will be on top.
At the most fundamental level, our reality is composed of four observable dimensions. Three dimensions for space embedded in a time dimension. From there, it’s all abstractions.
We are living in those four dimensions and so are businesses. We are challenging you to find one example of a business that is not tied to that physical reality, if you can find one please let us know. Through this hard physical fact, we are stating that we all are and have always been in a spacetime optimization economy.
The Internet for example, is a tremendous spacetime optimizer. It is enabling us to communicate with each other without the need to physically move in space through time to talk with each other.
Any businesses that optimize our experience of spacetime is highly successful. E-commerce is another good example, bringing products to your door instead of requiring you to go to the products, saving us time and reducing the energy needed to move in space.
But processing the complete reality is nearly impossible. To start with, our own brains cannot process it all. So we’ve naturally evolved to abstract reality, focusing our attention on the most critical aspects. The brain focuses its cognitive processing on the most relevant signals provided by our senses.
This is really well reflected in the way businesses are processing their four dimensional reality. They abstract it through digital solutions. ERP, CRM, inventory management systems and supply chain systems, just to name a few, are all providing businesses with an abstracted data view of what is going on in their four dimensional physical reality.
The problem with abstraction is that it only offers a partial understanding of reality. As businesses grow in size, the reality they need to process increases as well. This added complexity usually leads to abstract the abstractions.
This is all natural since the reality viewpoint of the people operating those businesses is at one point totally defined by the view they get from their digital solutions. Once the abstraction becomes too complex to understand, well we naturally add another level of abstraction.
The terrible result of this natural abstraction process is that at one point, businesses lose touch with reality, the four inescapable spacetime dimensions, their physical reality. When that happens, they die.
Which is why the average lifespan of S&P 500 companies is under 20 years. Despite great financial resources and highly skilled team, they’ve abstracted reality to the point where they don’t understand it anymore. Ask Sears or Blockbuster, who both failed in optimizing their customers’ spacetime experience.
We’ve built AI models that can process our beloved four dimensions. Our value prop — no abstraction. Learn more at https://extend.ai
