Business Development Metrics

I am always amazed by how ideas can come from anywhere. That is one of the reasons why me reading interests can span anything from Astronomy to Linguistics.

One of Chris Locke’s blogs, Mystic Bourgeoisie, had a reference to a BBC documentary called “The Trap”. The 3 hour piece is far too interesting and far too long to make any good summaries in here. That being said, I shall share the concept that draw me to write this lines.

During the Cold War, mathematicians developed model of society based on game theory. For this model to work, the human beings are reduced to a simplified version of ourselves. This was latter applied as the theoretical basis for multiple government policies put in place during the 90’s. I really recommend the documentary, wether you agree or disagree with the content, it is most certainly quite eye-opening.

Back in the corporate world an analogy can be drawn as well. For decades companies have regarded customers as little more than potentially-buying machines that can be manipulated into acting in the desired way by the means of advertising and marketing. The advent of Internet and social media have built greater complexity into this model. The relation between companies and customers is far more complex and far more difficult than it used to be.

For starters, the one-way communication model of traditional advertising seems to be sinking rapidly into uselessness. The never ending bombardment with TV, Radio and Print ads, billboards and, dare I say it, on-line advertising has made the mean population almost numb to such means of influence. There have most certainly attempts to insufflate some life back into traditional ads, viral being the latest. The funny thing is that Viral has to rely on the user’s action to be successful, something that directly contradicts the old paradigm of “we talk, you listen (and buy)”. Yet “viral” is still a traditional way of promotion in most senses.

While I was giving some thought to this concepts I couldn’t avoid but thinking about Isaac Asimov’s “Foundation” series. In case you haven’t read it, I’d say you skip the next paragraph, I’m going to spoil the story.

Asimov thinks about a future galactic empire that is swirling down in decadence. No one seems to notice that, but a group of thinkers, commanded by Hari Seldon, creator of the Psychohistory field of thought. Psychohistorians build mathematical models that can predict the future, thus they foresee the decadence and collapse of the empire and, more importantly, the dark ages that are to follow it. Their plan to reduce this dark times is to build Foundation, an encyclopedic world, a stronghold of knowledge, guided through the ages by the sporadic recorded messages of Hari Seldon, that appear every time a crisis is faced by foundation. All goes well until something that no model can predict happens: a mutant -the Mule- has the power to manipulate human brains at will. He overtakes over foundation and puts Psychohistorians plans at stake. A Second Foundation exists to deal with such issues, their field of work is not maths, but developing human’s mental capabilities.

The shifts in paradigms are not an easy thing to cope with, the belief systems associated with them are usually deeply rooted within people advocating for them. change is not easy.

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