ai — Strategy-for-Winning
Where and How to Play is Critical to Winning
Many of us profess to want to play-to-win but for too many of us, it amounts to nothing but wishful thinking because talk without strategy is just fantasy. Many also jump into things and call themselves entrepreneurs, just because — thinking that having an idea alone is enough to propel them to success. I often have to explain to entrepreneurs and organizations alike that just having a good idea is not nearly enough for winning. Because an idea may be great, the conditions necessary for it to become a valuable enterprise are often based more on how the future will unfold. And that is independent of the idea.
Therefore, the work begins with first approaching your idea development in a non-emotional or non-intuitive way, but by a disciplined process of analysis, logic, and towards strategy formulation as a first principle to winning. Therefore, the scientific process is optimal for your success factor because it’s better to know than to guess.
Over two thousand years ago, Aristotle defined a first principle as “the first basis from which a thing is known.” A first principle is a basic assumption that cannot be deduced any further. It is the cornerstone starting point to building your idea. First principles thinking is about thinking scientifically — don’t assume anything.
Strategy, therefore, must be the first principle towards enterprise value creation. So building a strategic roadmap with the necessary tactics and measurement tools that allows for testing of your idea, based on the market you are trying to reach. Strategy is a functional utility that must include innovation and technology, and contrary to popular belief, you can’t dream your way to entrepreneurial success.
In the digital era, it is imperative to recognize intelligent technologies’ extraordinary enterprise worth and apply them to the right value-advancing tasks and processes. Technology can deliver tremendous value to the enterprise, and AI, for example, can span across many domains; driving effectiveness and providing specialized algorithmic solutions throughout the development and growth journey. Therefore, not augmenting your human intelligence to elevate and accelerate your enterprising idea, is ignorance.
We are at the beginning of the 21st century, and we are now firmly entrenched in the new hyper-intensified knowledge-based economy, so we must find those intelligence-based technologies to augment our human intelligence capacity to position our ideas for success. Expanding capacity similar to how a factory adds another production line to increase productivity and output. But this time the production line addition must be data science, artificial intelligence, and machine learning.
For that reason, the next move, and possibly the most crucial in strategy-for-winning is determining where-to-play. Again, good ideas are a dime a dozen, and dreams happen every night. So the key to winning comes down to the variables, and the biggest one is the mighty independent variable — the conditions or environment conducive for success to happen — and that is unpredictable. Therefore, how the future unfolds is always a major determining factor, which can never be factored out.
We must compute the probability of an optimal world unfolding in our idea’s favour, so it’s best to apply some math to your idea because math explains the universe — it determines if something is true or not — the objective truth must always be the main objective. There is no guarantee of anything of course, but the more intelligence you add to your success equation the greater the probability of you succeeding.
We can apply Douglas Blackwell’s proprietary ai — applied intelligence application equation to our strategy development process to find the maximum utility of any idea.
The following figure is a representation that depicts the utility of the idea as certain values change. We are simply looking for the idea’s maximum utility function that is necessary to create enterprise value.
We can use the ai system methodology to compute and verify the utility probability factor for each possible world that can unfold, based on the likelihood of the characteristics being true. The output, of course, will not even be close to being perfect, but perfect can never be, AI or no AI, but like in calculus, we can only get close enough for the answer to be useful enough, to find functional value in the idea. So, given that we do not know what the future will be, we establish a set of possible worlds as predictors based on our inputs and then determine the associated probabilities of being realized to the benefit of the idea.
This science-driven prediction functionality will be more useful to enterprising ideas and will provide greater value to decisioning than if you did not apply any scientific method or discipline at all.
The applied intelligence process outputs are driven by a process that involves review, strategies, building, implementation and internalizing feedback. Through the effective use of data, we will help stakeholders to focus their resources and capacity building where return can be maximized with the minimum amount of risk.
Cutting to the chase, we simply need to find the maximum utility of the idea within the predicted possible worlds and build a strategy on the optimal world unfolding for us. This might only end up giving you just a little more competitive knowledge or edge, but we are in the knowledge economy after all, so any knowledge edge is important.
Therefore, what we think or what we may believe, is of little consequence; in the end, the only thing of consequence is what is real! And science can be a great optimizer of imagination.
Below is a visual representation of the algorithmic evaluation of the possible worlds relative to finding the maximum utility value.
So, the ai led scientific approach to decisioning is simply more reliable because of its objectivity. The entrepreneur’s deployment of time resources can be the most important strategic choice of all, we don’t want to squander that with constructive delusional thinking. Winning comes down to not having a killer product or service but to a deliberative process, to help make the right moves, and avoid or minimize errors in judgment.
I often see so many entrepreneurs or organizational leaders lead with their egos instead of applying their intelligence, and many who were successful in building a business in the old economy believe they can replicate that same success in the new economy. This group seems to value more physical tasks and property than intellectual or digital, physical labour, plant and equipment instead of IP. However, applying the old economy mindset to the new economy is counterintuitive and counterproductive.
Adaptation is essential to progress and winning, the world keeps evolving, and you either adapt your thinking and applications relative to the new environment or suffer. Simple natural selection! And intelligent technology is the selection you must make and utilize as a competitive tool to get things done effectively — it is a hyper-extension of the sophistication of self-preservation.
The ai process can also identify the white spaces of opportunity through the inherent process of discovery; new insights or discoveries can be filtered down to the optimal potential for success, using computational, quantitative, and qualitative measures to evaluate those ideas and opportunities through relentless iteration and rigorous testing.
The push must be strategic, utilizing intelligence systems that are based on data science — ai breaks through and breaks things down across 4 different analyses to help with winning.
Dimensional Analysis: Vision clarity through strategy IP and structuring of ideas is crucial to develop detailed concepts to apply testing algorithms to.
Scenario Analysis: Gain/Pain Ratio, Competitor Analysis, Key Features, Value Proposition, and Concept Testing.
Problem Analysis: Market testing: Alpha and beta testing; provide a road map for the optimal path to a decision, i.e., should we invest and move forward with the idea, or not?
Benefit Structure Analysis: Process: identify the decision, gather information, weigh the evidence, choose among alternatives, and act
…applied intelligence is the natural evolutionary process of the application of human executive function — continued improvement and optimization. Strategy is about doing, and ultimately success comes down to what you do next!
So, having a disciplined strategic process for decisioning with a long-term outlook on things is to maximize and leverage your intelligence. Put aside all the nonsense and noise about intuition and gut, it’s about information! A real strategy is always beneficial, it improves your odds greatly, and can save you from significant financial pain and suffering. Data-and-applied-intelligence-driven, performance-based, team-oriented approaches to executing ideas are the correct moves to be made.
