Developments


The Unicist Logical Approach to Strategy to make Businesses Grow

The unicist logical approach to strategy is based on managing businesses as adaptive systems. It implies using the unicist logic to define the dynamic of a business including the restricted and wide scenario in order to forecast the natural evolution and what can be done to influence it.

Unicist Ontogenetic Map of StrategiesUnicist strategy is defined as the conscious action to influence an environment to achieve an objective. This objective implies growth. The procedure to develop a strategy is defined by the use of unicist logical tools based on the specific ontogenetic maps.

Therefore strategy implies being aware of the actual reality, understanding the implicit trends and knowing the threats and opportunities.

Conscious actions imply necessarily a trade-off. Individuals and institutions grow because they appropriate more energy than they deliver.

Therefore strategies are only successful in the long run when the procedure of strategies includes a solution to minimize the cost of the delivered value.

Strategies always include the following agents: the individual or organization, a “competitor” and a “client”. Competitors are those who are willing to occupy the same vital space. Clients are those who receive the added value one delivers. The client can be the whole environment as an entity or an individual.

Strategies include naturally two elements to adapt to reality: an active function to increase the vital space while adding value and an energy-conservation function to ensure the survival of the organization or individual.

Thus from an operational standpoint a strategy is basically defined by the integration of a maximal strategy and a minimum strategy to adapt to the environment.

Adaptation does not imply over-adaptation. Adaptation implies influencing the environment while being influenced by it.

Specific Strategy Building

Specific strategies are based on the input provided by the wide context scenarios and the restricted context scenarios.

These scenarios have to provide the information of the gravitational forces that influence the specific activity, the possibilities for developing them, the catalyst that may exist and the inhibitors that need to be avoided or accepted as limits for the strategy building.

Unicist Ontogenetic Map of Specific Strategy BuildingAn organization or individual is equilibrated when maximal strategies are being developed while minimum strategies are built to ensure the survival.

Maximal strategies are designed to expand the boundaries of an individual or organization, while minimum strategies happen within the boundaries of an organization.

That is why maximal strategies require dealing with uncertainty and risks and only a conscious knowledge of the unified field that integrates the wide context, the restricted context, the specific strategy and the architecture of the solution allows managing it.

To deal with maximal strategies it is necessary to have a high level of consciousness that allows dealing with backward-chaining thinking that allows envisioning the solution.

Backward-chaining thinking implies approaching a strategy with a hypothetical solution and beginning a falsification and validation process that allows building a final solution.

Minimum strategies are those that happen within the known boundaries of an individual’s or organization’s activity working in a context of certainty.

Therefore, in these types of strategies, only a medium level of consciousness is required. Minimum strategies are based on forward-chaining thinking that allows working step by step based on the known methods of a known field.

Segmentation of Strategies

Strategy BuildingThe four structural operational segments of strategies will be defined considering them as static. Each one of them develops a different type of strategy:

1) Surviving Strategies
2) Defensive Strategies
3) Dominant Strategies
4) Influential Strategies

These segments can be described in unicist standard language as follows:

1) Surviving Strategies

These are the strategies that aim to survive within the boundaries of an activity. They are based on a win-win approach that has to be managed as a zero sum strategy in order to avoid appropriating value from the environment. These strategies are natural for marginal activities developed by people who work at the “border” of their environment. The price they pay is that surviving activities have no critical mass that sustains them. Therefore they need to be continuously active in order to ensure survival. They need to work 24/7.

2) Defensive Strategies

They aim to defend the boundaries of their activity against true threats. They are based on establishing the necessary operational and control systems to defend the “borders” of their activity. They are power driven because they need to exert power in order to defend their activity. They are focused on paying the necessary prices to sustain their business. The prices they pay sustain their survival and at the same time hinder their expansion. They work necessarily with strict zero-sum low cost, self-sufficient activities because they cannot trust others to defend their business.

3) Dominant Strategies

Dominant strategies are based on the influence the individual or the organization has in an environment. They are focused on developing the necessary value propositions that can be sustained with their influence. They tend to impose functional monopolies that allow them to establish the standard for their activities in the environment. They need to invest a high level of energy in developing their influence through image building and the exclusion of the individual or organizational competitors that do not accept their standards. They work with value adding strategies in order to legitimate their dominance.

4) Influential Strategies

They are based on exerting influence by improving the value proposition of their competitors. They are based on having the necessary speed to be “faster” than the competitors which allows them winning in their environment. Their value propositions are innovative and they are successful when they have the necessary critical mass to influence the environment. They are innovation driven in order to exert the influence of a higher value proposal. They naturally build alliances in order to obtain the necessary influence for their value propositions.

Synthesis

Maximal strategies are based on adding value to the environment while winning in the specific environment they work in and are sustained by the power they have to influence the context.

Maximal strategies define two positions in the environment:

  1. On the one hand, maximal strategies are natural to leaders that exert a dominant position in the environment.
  2. On the other hand, they are natural to influential individuals or organizations.

Minimum strategies are based on developing win-win strategies and paying the prices necessary to survive.

Peter Belohlavek

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


Market growth: Think before lowering the prices to grow

Price Elasticity of demand measures the responsiveness of demand to a change in the price of the product. Alfred Marshall first developed it. From our point of view this is one of the most believed fallacies in economic knowledge, because there is no direct dependence between these variables.

The price elasticity of demand is calculated by considering the percentage change in demand and dividing it by the percentage change in price.

But this relation is real only if there is no change in the perceived value of the product.

We consider the traditional theory an explanation of a particular situation which can not be considered a law.

Considering the Unicist Logical Approach the elasticity of demand, analyzed from the point of view of the supplier, depends on the price and the perceived value of products.

The sole fact of a product being used changes its value. Therefore it is necessary to understand that the “price elasticity of demand” depends on the price and the subjective value that sustains the price. The price elasticity occurs only within the fuzzy set described and defined by the value-price relation.

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.
https://www.unicist.net/financials/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/turi.pdf


Costs do not influence the use value of products

The value of a product does not depend on the cost to produce it. Costs might define the limit of the feasibility of a business but the do not define the value of the product.

The following metaphor will provide the general idea.

“The cost of a glass is given by its solidity.
The value is given by its hollowness.
Costs add no value.
Values add no costs.
But both integrate the glass.”

The value of a product is what makes a business possible and drives the maximal strategy. It has no causative relation with the cost. This is self-evident in the software business. But in the construction business, there appears to be a relationship between costs and value that in fact does not exist.

The costs of products define the minimum strategy; they define the feasibility of a business. In some type of businesses these limits are more significant than in others. But understanding that the costs have no causative relationship with the value allows defining expansive and profitable business strategies.

In business activity, the preceding metaphor can be completed with the saying:

“Businessmen/women need to reduce the costs, that have no value,
and increase the value that has no costs.”

Diego Belohlavek

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.
https://www.unicist.net/financials/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/turi-1.pdf


Discovery of the Nature of Decision Making

The discovery of the Concept of Decision Making opened the possibilities for increasing the accuracy of this process by introducing the essential aspects that drive decision making processes: the objective aspects, the subjective aspects, the reasonable groundings and the ethical justifications.

About Foundations

Foundations are reasonable, understandable and provable arguments. Fallacy avoidance is ensured when foundations are included in a decision making process. That is why foundations are basic in decision making.

Decision MakingFoundations avoid decisions when the end justifies the means. Foundations establish the reasonable limits of what can be decided.

There are several conditions that have to be given when making a grounded decision.

Foundations must be reasonable: that means that the nature of a reality needs to be described in a reasonable way.

Foundations must be provable: which means that they have to be able to be proven directly or through their materialistic aspects. The nature of a reality can only be proven through forecasting its materialistic evolution.

Foundations must be understandable: which means that an individual can only participate in a decision process if s/he understands the nature of the decision.

Decision Making Segments

Empiric decisions

It is the decision that is basically based on provable groundings. Empiric decision making uses all the empirical tools to sustain the validity of what is being decided (Statistics, experiences, pilot tests, etc). Empiric decisions are put into action based on economic justifications with the limits of subjective justifications.

Logical decisions

Logical decision making is based on the capacity of understanding and reasoning the arguments that sustain the decision making process.

Logical decision making processes use explicit or implicit models to analyze reality in order to make things happen. Logical decision making processes are put into action based on subjective justifications and are sustained by the economic justification of what is being decided.

Subjective decisions

Subjective decision making is based on the ethical and subjective justification of the individual who is deciding. Although the materialistic decision making is included, it is limited by the subjective boundaries of the individual.

Subjective decisions dominantly use feelings, intuition, beliefs, convictions and personal goals as drivers. Subjective decision making processes are put into action based on logical groundings and are sustained by empiric validation.

Materialistic decisions

Materialistic decision making is based on the ethical and materialistic justifications driven by the needs of deciders. Materialistic decisions have a high level of objectivity in order to build a bridge between the objective needs of the environment and the individual.

Objective decisions are based on measurable facts, objective relations between values, benefits and costs and the need to grow of all participants. They are put into action based on empirical groundings and sustained by logical validation.

Diana Belohlavek

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.
https://www.unicist.net/financials/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/turi.pdf


Unicist Theory: The Fundamental Analysis is back in the Banking Business

The past and the future are symmetric when nothing changes in an environment. But the speed of technological evolution increased the speed of changes in the market making evident that the past and the future are essentially asymmetric. In this scenario, fundamental analysis is the way to deal with business knowledge when a market evolves.

Fundamental analysis applied to financial decisions was born as a conceptual approach to businesses but was transformed into a meaningless operational approach.

The Unicist Theory made the development of the fundamentals of businesses possible that allowed managing their concepts. This made the integration of fundamental knowledge and technical knowledge possible, which allowed building reliable knowledge for decision making.

The Basics: Fundamental Analysis & Technical Analysis

Complex problem solving requires having the concept that describes the nature of the solution, the actions that need to be implemented to expand the existing boundaries of the problem and the technical knowledge to develop the minimum strategy to produce results. Concepts can be apprehended when the fundamentals of the solution have been integrated.

Knowledge Acquisition

Fundamental knowledge without technical knowledge fosters “movement fallacies”. Technical knowledge without fundamental knowledge fosters “inaction fallacies”.

It has to be considered that the intrinsic structures of fundamental knowledge and of technical knowledge are opposite to each other, but their effects are complementary to build a solution.

That is why only people who can deal with the integration of these oppositions can apprehend concepts. This is the case of the universal apparent dichotomy of yin and yang.

The Unicist Theory, based on the discovery of the ontogenetic intelligence of nature, allowed developing the unicist ontological structure of fundamentals, which made fundamental analysis “resurrect from the ashes”.

Fundamental analysis is supposed to deal with the drivers of the nature of any entity but was transformed, probably influenced by technical analysis, into an analytic approach to standardized indicators.

The Unicist Theory provided the framework to research and discover the fundamentals of an entity and defined the structure of their integration.

The symbol of Yin and Yang, representing the TAO, necessarily emulates the structure of the ontogenetic intelligence of nature and is homologous with the Unicist Logic. If you are not aware of the scientific use of the TAO, we recommend reading the book “Tao of Physics” by Fritjof Capra.

Fundamentals are the elements that define the functionality of an entity.

They define the structure of an entity´s unicist ontology and allow building its ontogenetic map.

Fundamental analysis is the approach that defines the limits of the possibilities of the evolution of a given reality.

Fundamentals define the boundaries implicit in the functionality of a given reality.

Technical analysis deals with the cause-effect relation between “variables” that have been identified making a systemic compromise.

The discovery of the unicist ontology of evolution and the structure of concepts that regulate the evolution of living beings and their deeds established the structure for fundamental analysis integrating it with technical analysis in order to develop reliable knowledge.

Knowledge of Adaptive Systems

Technical knowledge is popular because it is based on dualistic logic which is functional to the use of “binary neurons”. Fundamental knowledge requires accessing a double dialectical logic which requires an action-reflection-action process. That is why fundamental knowledge is associated with wisdom.

The purpose of a knowledge acquisition process is to obtain reliable knowledge.

Reliable knowledge is necessary when individuals are willing to ensure a minimum strategy or are exposed to uncertain or risky environments.

In everyday activities only operational knowledge is required.

This ontology is a final synthesis of the use of fundamental and technical analysis in the world of economic, social and business behavior.

Fundamentals describe the ontology of a given reality considered as a unified field. Technical analysis describes the cause-effect relations of a reality considered as a systemic object.

When working in a known context there is only need for feedback (operational analysis), an analytic approach and intuitive / rational decision making.

Knowledge Acquisition

Technical Analysis and Fundamental Analysis are intrinsically opposite approaches for knowledge acquisition, but they are operational complements when reliable knowledge needs to be acquired. The natural pathway to knowledge acquisition begins by accessing the fundamentals, that define “what” is being done, and continues with the technical knowledge that defines “how” the operational solution will be achieved.

Technical analysis provides sufficient information and the necessary cause-effect groundings to make decisions.

When the context is uncertain the understanding of fundamentals is necessary.

Fundamentals are defined by the concepts that regulate the evolution of a fact.

Validation processes naturally degrade into fallacies when they do not include falsification processes.

Validation implies a non-destructive test and falsification is a destructive test measuring the accuracy and limits of a knowledge.

When a reliable knowledge is required to deal with minimum strategies, risks or uncertainty, the integration of technical and fundamental analysis is required.

The Business Intelligence Strategy

The driver of knowledge acquisition is the need for groundings in order to achieve a reliable knowledge to make decisions. Groundings are necessary when dealing with complexity (i.e. minimum strategies), risk or uncertainty.

The minimum strategy is given by technical analysis to provide the necessary cause-effect knowledge. The maximal strategy to influence the environment is given by the knowledge of the fundamentals.

The catalyst to accelerate the building of reliable knowledge with a minimum strategy is conceptual knowledge. Conceptual knowledge establishes the secure limits of cause-effect knowledge.

Fundamental analysis and technical analysis provide the operational structure to achieve the objective of having reliable knowledge to make decisions.

When technical analysis is not integrated with fundamental analysis it naturally derives into analogical/hypothetical knowledge. When reliable knowledge is needed both approaches must be integrated.

Synthesis

Fundamental Analysis

Fundamental analysis is the approach that defines the limits of the possibilities of the evolution of a given reality. Fundamentals define the boundaries implicit in the functionality of that given reality.

Although adaptive systems and complex systems have open boundaries, they can only be managed when limits have been defined.

Defining limits based on the fundamentals of a given reality implies dealing with its nature and accepting its evolution laws. In the short or the long run the evolution of a given reality will drive towards its nature.

Fundamental analysis provides the tools to describe the nature of a reality in order to forecast its evolution. Evolution can be inhibited and catalyzed by human actions; but it cannot be changed.

Technical Analysis

Technical analysis deals with the cause-effect relation between “variables” that have been identified by making a systemic compromise.

In order to be able to manage a reality in everyday actions it is necessary to define it with systemic tools.

Systemic tools are based on cause-effect relations and therefore the result of transforming a complex reality into a simple system downgrades the possibilities of success. In technical analysis success becomes probabilistic.

Fundamental analysis defines the possibilities (0 or 1) and technical analysis defines the probabilities (from 0 to 1).

Fundamental analysis has been downgraded during the last 30 years. As there were no objective tools to approach it, it was considered as the “subjective” aspects of technical analysis.

The discovery of the unicist ontology of evolution and the structure of the concept that regulate the evolution of living beings and their deeds, established the structure for fundamental analysis integrating it with technical analysis in order to develop reliable knowledge.

Peter Belohlavek

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.
https://www.unicist.net/financials/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/turi.pdf


Stock markets depend on the trend towards evolution

The evolution of markets is what makes them more reliable. Thus, markets that evolve, naturally establish a context that allows making businesses.

Investment requires an evolution context and speculation is more profitable in involution contexts. Therefore investments foster evolution and speculation fosters involution.

About Evolution and Involution

The double dialectical process that produces the double pendulum generates a high level of entropy in each movement.

The higher the level of evolution, the smaller is the amplitude of the pendulum and the lower is the entropy.

Theoretically, evolution could drive towards perfection, where materialistic and non-materialistic reality is one. At this level reality as it is perceived by humans could not exist.

But this is just hypothetical. Real life includes involution, which occurs when a specific object becomes dysfunctional to the environment.

Thus involution begins including increasing amplitude of the double dialectical pendulum.

This implies increasing entropy between the positions, generating a trend in which the loss of energy that occurs between the polarities generates an involving trend.

Involution drives toward the death of the object, its mutation or its recovery, when it finds a source of energy to compensate the involution trend and begins an evolution cycle.

In any case, it implies a new object with a different energy level with or without mutations.

Diana Belohlavek

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.org/repo/#Unicist


Unicist Forecast of the Evolution of Markets

The Unicist Approach to Future Research is based on the research of the unicist ontogenetic intelligence of nature that started at the beginning of the 80’s.

It was a step by step discovery based on the apprehension of the nature of social phenomena entering afterwards in the institutional and individual evolution. Its integration with biology and physics was the final stage that was achieved.

This approach is based on the fact that future and past are not symmetric. This is the case of all the environments that are evolving or involving. The past and the future are only symmetric in stagnated environments.

The objective of the unicist approach to future research is to define a future scenario in order to adapt and influence it.

When an individual “looks back” at the history, the events that occurred are reasonable, understandable and logical. Therefore when approaching the future what is required is having the “logic” that is evident when analyzing the events of the past.

The building of future scenarios is based on the fact that the structure of the unicist ontology of a specific environment needs to be found in the past and that the facts of the present are used to infer the future.

The unicist approach to future research is based on inferring the future based on the laws of evolution established by the ontogenetic intelligence of nature, which allowed developing the unicist ontology of evolution.

This allows building reliable future scenarios.

Diana Belohlavek

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.
https://www.unicist.net/financials/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/turi-1.pdf


Pilot testing: The core of a pragmatic approach to business

Doers are natural users of pilot tests because they provide the security that what they are doing will work.

Pilot testing implies testing a functionality and requires a precise design of the tests. The “trial and error” applications are not pilot tests. Pilot tests must include both destructive and non destructive tests.

Pilot tests are the drivers of the unicist reflection processes. Pilot tests have two objectives:

  1. Destructive Testing
  2. Non-destructive Testing

1) Destructive Testing

Falsification, in the field of complex problems, implies finding the limits of the validity of a given knowledge. To do so, it is necessary to develop experiences in homologous fields until the limits of validity are found.

Two elements are homologous when they have the same “nature”. A whale and a dog (an extreme example) are homologous if they are considered as mammals. A dollar and a yen are homologous considering that they are both money.

2) Non-destructive testing

Validation implies the factual confirmation of the validity of knowledge. Validation is achieved when knowledge suffices to exert influence on a reality in a predictable way.

The validation process is homologous to a non-destructive test in the field of material research. Validation implies cause-effect relations. Therefore, validation can only be applied to a simplified field of a complex reality.

Conclusion

Pilot tests must include both non-destructive and destructive tests. The application of destructive tests requires being aware of the concepts of the realities where this test is applied.

Knowledge is secure when its validity and its limits were found. Exceptions to this rule are universal natural laws which are “universally homologous”.

Diego Belohlavek

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


The Factor Zero – The power of nil – Part IV

Complex adaptive systems are integrated by a conjunction of “objects”. Mathematically, this integration of objects implies a multiplication of their representative factors. If one of them is “zero”, the whole adaptive system doesn’t work.

Factor ZeroAdaptive systems cannot allow the existence of zeros. One zero suffices to destroy a system.

The Factor “Zero” is an anti-concept that destroys any adaptive system. It establishes the groundings for inaction, annulment or destruction.

The ontology of the factor “zero” describes how human inaction, annulment or destruction is sustained by a fallacious ethics.

It is the ethics of stagnant survivors that provides them a feeling of superiority based on their capacity to hinder value adding actions in their area of influence.

Factor “zero” is the integration of suspicion, doubt and unawareness in order to avoid the responsibility of an adaptive system and destroy it.

It suffices if one of these elements exists. We will use the ontological structure to define them:

The purpose of suspicion is distrust. This implies that the final objective of the factor zero is to install distrust in order to destroy what threatens the individual.

It adopts extremely subtle disguises in order to work. If not it would be noticeable and avoidable. Usually, when the factor zero is perceived it is because it already worked.

Suspicion is driven by the fear an individual feels in a situation and the guilt of being unable to deal with it. The active function of the factor “zero” is given by the doubt individuals have when dealing with adaptive systems.

Doubt is basically driven by the individuals’ super-ego and operationally by their superiority complexes, the counterpart of inferiority complexes, and their unwillingness to make trade-offs with the reality they work in.

The energy conservation function of the factor “zero” is given by the unawareness individuals have of the situation they are living in.

Unawareness requires learning avoidance in order to exist. The learning capacity is sustained by the energy conservation principle given by the inferiority complexes of individuals. Operationally, learning avoidance and inferiority complexes define unawareness.

At an operational level the factor “zero” can be considered as the consequence of integrating doubt, unawareness, human complexes and price paying avoidance.

Diego Belohlavek

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. https://www.unicist.net/financials/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/turi.pdf


Unicist Innovations in Corporate Finance

Financial aspects are “consequences” seen from the point of view of a company but “causes” when they are seen from the point of view of shareholders. The innovation introduced by the use of unicist ontology based and object driven technologies allowed developing a framework to manage maximal and minimum strategies to ensure results where causes and consequences are integrated.

Fundamental analysis, which is based on the unicist ontology, is what provides the understanding of actions and technical analytical information sustains the energy conservation in a company. The following description will give the basics of the innovation.

The activities of the Unicist Confederation are expanding based on the introduction of the unicist ontology and business objects driven technologies.

The Object Driven Organization of the adaptive aspects of businesses is the technology included in all the “solutions” for business optimization.

The Confederation itself also uses business objects for its growth. These objects ensure the critical mass of the solutions it provides to the market. Business solutions require the use of driving, catalyzing and gravitational business objects.

1) The business objects are the drivers of the activity providing the solutions that generate significant energy savings and optimization of results to their users.

2) The unicist approach, including diagnoses, strategies and architectures of the solutions is the catalyst of the Confederation’s proposals.

3) The emulation of nature in business is the gravitational object that sustains the activities of the Confederation.

This approach segments the market. Basically, it can be said that the object driven approach is necessary for business expansion and convenient for business administration.

NOTE: The Unicist Research Institute was the pioneer in complexity science research and became a global decentralized world-class research organization in the field of human adaptive systems. https://www.unicist.net/financials/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/turi.pdf