The 4th Industrial Revolution applied to Business

The 4th Industrial Revolution introduced a paradigm shift that allows empowering business adaptability and customer orientation that is an upgrade towards a superior level of value generation.

The unicist evolutionary approach (UEA) to the 4IR is based on managing the unified field of business functions to increase their adaptability, productivity, quality, customer orientation and sustainability.

The UEA manages the concepts and fundamentals of processes and emulates the intelligence, organization and evolution of nature to develop maximal strategies to grow and minimum strategies to ensure results.

Since 1976, The Unicist Research Institute has been a precursor of the research in adaptability based on the unicist functionalist approach that manages the root causes of the functionality of business processes and develops unicist strategies to generate growth, adaptability, and profitability.

It allowed developing the unicist functional design which includes:

1. Binary Actions to ensure results
2. Business Catalysts to expand businesses and accelerate processes
3. Business Objects to optimize processes

Unicist Strategy: an Emulation of Nature

The discovery of the triadic ontogenetic intelligence of nature that regulates the evolution of living beings allowed understanding the structure of evolution, which is driven by two synchronized actions that have been defined as maximal strategies to grow and minimum strategies to ensure survival. This functionality also applies to artificial adaptive systems.

The functionality of adaptive systems is driven by binary actions, which include objects and catalysts. Therefore, the development of strategies in adaptive environments requires building synchronized binary actions to influence each adaptive function of an environment.

The strategy building process requires defining the ontogenetic maps that describe the fundamentals of the functions involved, defining what is possible to be achieved, designing the maximal and minimum strategies, and developing the synchronized unicist binary actions (UBAs) to ensure the generation of results. Learn more

The Use of Binary Actions

Binary actions are two synchronized actions that expand businesses while they ensure their results. They were developed to manage the evolution of adaptive environments by managing actions to install maximal strategies to grow and minimum strategies to ensure results.

Any adaptive system and environment (living being or artificial construction) is driven by binary actions. Some examples will help to grasp the idea:

1. The active function and the energy conservation function of the intelligence of a tree drive its growth and survival.
2. Lift and propulsion make airplanes take-off and fly.
3. The cover and the back-cover define the functionality of the packaging of a book.
4. The music and the lyrics of a song define its aesthetics.

Universally known examples of binary action are:

• Efficacy + Efficiency = Effectiveness
• Empathy + Sympathy = Personal influence
• Participation + Power = Leadership
• Marketing + Sales = New customers
• Productivity + Quality = Value generation

The use of binary actions to manage adaptive environments is a must.

The Use of Business Catalysts

Catalysts are process accelerators that diminish the efforts needed to produce results.

The discovery of the structure of the functionality of biological and behavioral catalysts allowed developing business catalysts which are necessary to accelerate processes and drive the evolution of businesses. Some examples will help to grasp the idea:

1. The GE Open Innovation works as a catalyst for the GE Business
2. Special offers are sales catalysts
3. The direct publishing alternative is a catalyst that expands the business of Amazon.
4. The Deep Blue chess-playing supercomputer versus Garry Kasparov in the 90’s was an equity catalyst for IBM

These catalysts might be entities that exist in the environment or catalyzing objects that are built by the companies. Catalyzing Objects are needed to ensure the sustainability of business processes. The levels of acceleration catalysts introduce in processes, depend on the specificity of their functions.

• Generic Catalysts accelerate the functionality of institutions or organizations. Their acceleration is low.
• Systemic Catalysts accelerate the functionality of functions and roles. Their acceleration is medium.
• Specific Catalysts accelerate the functionality of processes. Their acceleration is high.
• Conjunctural Catalysts accelerate the functionality of conjuncture driven processes. Their acceleration is very high.

The Use of Business Objects

Unicist business objects are encapsulated adaptive systems that produce predefined results that can be inserted in work processes to increase productivity and quality and to save energy.

To imagine an object please consider an automatic pilot in an airplane. It can be considered a “paradigmatic” object. From a functional point of view there are different types of objects:

• 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.

Some examples will help to grasp the idea:

1. YouTube Creators work as Driving Objects.
2. Google Chrome works as a Catalyzing Object that expands and increases the functionality of the Google business.
3. Ericsson Consumer Lab works as an Entropy Inhibiting Object that inhibits the entropy of marketing processes ensuring that the value propositions are focused on real needs.
4. Medical Protocols work as Inhibiting Objects that inhibit dysfunctional events in medical praxis.

Unicist Functional Design

The unicist functional design is based on anticipating, planning, designing, and managing business processes and their consequences using binary actions, business objects and catalyst to ensure results. Unicist functional design is the unicist logical approach to design solutions in adaptive environments.

The unicist ontological approach is based on the emulation of the intelligence of nature. It allows designing maximal strategies to generate growth and minimum strategies to ensure results in adaptive environments.

Functional design introduced an upgrade in the design of adaptive business processes. While empirical design is based on the knowledge of the know-how of businesses, functional design is based on the integration of the know-why with the know-how.