Thinking through business and marketplace ecosystems and related constructs 43

This is my 43rd installment to a series on business and marketplace ecosystems, that seeks to go beyond simply applying that term as a loosely considered metaphor. And I argue a case here that the understandings and even the basic dynamics of ecosystems, and of niches and niche spaces and more, as initially conceived and developed in a biological systems context, apply directly and with just as much relevance to a business and economics context too. See Business Strategy and Operations – 6 and its Page 7 continuation, postings 1022 and loosely following for Parts 1-42 of this.

I have been discussing a set of core issues in this series that I have organized for the most part in terms of a set of topic points that I repeat here for their most recently reedited versions: updated for greater contextual clarity as I have proceeded in this overall narrative:

• I have briefly discussed how ecosystem scale correlates with realizable niche space complexity and diversity in both a biological ecosystem and a business and marketplace ecosystem-framed context. And I have posed the following pair of questions as they emerge from those systems and how they are organized.
• Is human driven globalization starting to empirically test that scalability in a biological ecosystem context?
• And what can we see and learn for how the dynamics of such processes are shaping and will continue to shape and reshape, and expand or limit the scale and complexity and diversity of our local, regional and global business and marketplace ecosystems too?

I am currently addressing the third of these topics points. To bring this initial orienting note up to date as I continue pursuing this narrative, I offered Part 42 as a next-step outline for how I am going to proceed in that, starting with this posting. And I begin doing so by noting that I framed the first two of the above main topics points in terms of ecosystem scale as a diversity limiting factor, I have added a second source of constraining consideration to that as I have proceeded, and particularly in more recent installments to this: the parameterizing constraints that are descriptively and predictively contained in the intermediate disturbance hypothesis, as that was developed and offered in a biological ecosystem context.

I offered a number of to-address points in Part 42 and I will address them in what follows here. But to set the stage for that, my goal for this posting is to at least briefly outline how I would apply that same ecosystems model to an anthropocentric, business, marketplace and I add technological ecosystem context. Crucially importantly here, the human ecosystem that we live in and that is so organized, is a significantly and consequentially distinct subsystem in the overall ecology of our planet. And as such, it has to be understood and addressed as a separate overall entity there if its impact on the larger whole that it belongs to is to be understood and addressed.

With that, let’s start at the beginning and with a brief restatement of a biological systems application of this overall conceptual model. I briefly outlined the intermediate disturbance hypothesis in that more standard context in Part 40 in that context. And to briefly quote from it, I noted that:

• Its reasoning can be specifically applied in predicting the maximum level of species diversity that can be expected in an ecosystem as the scale of at-least potentially disruptive disturbance that it faces, varies and as a pattern.
• Building from that repeated point here, I posit a meaningful application of this hypothesis in a human ecosystem context, for how it can be applied to understanding the diversity of human communities as they are and are not supported by business and economic systems and by technological resource bases, and I add other community enablers and challengers that in their institution and in their alignments and competitions create stability and disruption.

I will also address how this model can be applied within communities as businesses compete for market share in the face of continuity and disturbance in such contexts. But I will start this overall line of discussion here at a higher organizational level first and then pursue that perhaps more expected line of discussion, in the contextual terms that I begin discussing here.

And with that I assert that the correlational and causally connecting patterns noted in the intermediate disturbance hypothesis as initially formulated can be found in how the pace of disturbance and disruption, and its severity interact for their combined impact on ecosystems and their diversity in general, and for all types of ecosystems. Patterns of rare low impact disruption, and patterns of rapidly recurring more individually disruptive disturbance events both lead to the same result of minimizing the potential diversity and complexity that ecosystems can sustainably support. And a potential for maximized diversity and complexity in them can be realized when both the pace and severity of disturbance arise in ecosystems at intermediate levels, and with the precise maximization points that can be expected there predictable on the basis of empirical data as developed from the study of comparable, already researched local ecosystem communities.

I have written in this series, about the accelerating pace of change in the anthropogenic, anthropocentric ecosystem that I write of here, and about how that pace and the human impact that we see on biological ecosystems is greater than they can respond to and still maintain homeostatic balance that would lead to their continuance without systems complexity and diversity loss. Human activity is actively stressing the larger overall biological ecosystem that we in fact exist within, from the rapid pace of change, high disturbance end of the intermediate disturbance hypothesis model pressures that we create and maintain, and that we continue to expand upon. And cutting ahead in this overall discussion for a moment, the ever-increasing size of our human population has brought our human communities and our species into direct zero-sum competition with essentially every local biological ecosystem on our planet, and certainly all that we can reach – and with that bringing this disruption pattern with us too.

But at the same time, we bring comparable, corresponding pressures on our overall human society as for example where have and have-not nations compete and on the uneven playing fields that inevitably arise in such contexts. Haves have more and in ways that are self-reinforcing. They create levels and types of resiliency for themselves from this ongoing dynamic that have-not nations can never achieve and with that consigning them to they’re staying have-not barring paradigm breaking change there. And globalization as coming so much from have nation technological and business process advancements has both enhanced and improved the situation for have nations, and created the types of disruptive pressures that understandings such as those of the intermediate disturbance hypothesis predict with globalizing homogenization and loss of local identity from that an ongoing challenge that has to be explicitly challenged in order to maintain community and cultural diversity.

Ecosystem size-based scale factors are important in this. Briefly turning back to biological systems here for comparison, ecologically stable island communities that only appear to systematically differ by size, coordinately differ for their species diversity too. And size scale correlates with a variety of factors of relevance here when comparing human communities too, as I will discuss in at least some detail in discussion to come in this series. But the issues and the forces raised in and analyzed in the intermediate disturbance hypothesis apply here too.

And this holds as true within individual communities and when considering the dynamics of their class and related systems as it does when looking at how those issues play out between them.

All of the factors that I address here are important for how they can add selective benefit or instability with its potentials into ecosystems in general. Now and in the face of all that I have offered here, think of the human ecosystem as cited here and certainly when considered from a biological ecosystems perspective, as being comprised of our local and national and otherwise scaled competing communities, but with them all increasingly becoming more and more tightly integrating into a global whole and even if as a less detail and diversely enriched one. Even with the resistance and friction to that process that I allude to here and that I have written about in earlier series about here, with its pushback against such globalization, think of our collective communities as increasingly, representing a single overarching more unitary global presence too. And our increasing interconnectedness and through trade and travel and through communications and coordinated information development and sharing, are actively driving that and with all of the impact that this brings to our world: the determination of what is possible for global biological diversity included in that too.

I am going to reconsider the human community and ecosystem sides of the issues that I raise here, and from an explicit business and marketplace perspective in the next installment to this series, and both for how business competition and market pressures enter into this narrative and for how the dynamics of that impact upon and shape both technological and cultural diffusion and retention, with their consequences. This, I add, will bring me back to the five “organizing levels” that I raised as points for discussion in Part 42 as I seek to more fully tie this line of discussion together.

Meanwhile, you can find this and related postings and series at Business Strategy and Operations – 7, and also at Page 1, Page 2, Page 3, Page 4, Page 5 and Page 6 of that directory.

Aligning human innovation and technological advancement with larger environmental needs 7

I have been addressing climate change and other global challenges in a succession of interrelated series in this blog, and I offer this one as a continuation to that narrative progression. My goal here is to discuss possible technology based approaches to affecting positive change here, their possible implementations, and their providers. See United Nations Global Alliance for ICT and Development (UN-GAID) 2 for Parts 1-6 of this series.

I focused in Part 1 and Part 2 on two of the most significant sources of environmental challenge that we collectively face: our seemingly ever-expanding carbon footprint as it drives global warming, and our equally expanding problem of global pollution from plastic in its many forms. I ended Part 2 by offering a set of six topic points that you can find listed there in their entirety. I have been focusing on the first two of them since then, alternatively addressing both of those complex sets of issues in the process. And I continue to addressing them here, focusing on our carbon footprint challenge as I have discussed it here, beginning in Part 1 of this series:

1. I am going to at least categorically discuss approaches that might be considered and attempted in remediating such challenges, and ones that are already being deployed to address them.
2. That is where detailed understandings of the issues faced and of how they might best be acted upon have to be addressed. That is where broad generalities as favored by policy makers in summits and related forums, and in their within-nation planning have to meet with and constructively respond to our day-to-day realities and actionably so. And that is where complex and even seemingly contradictory details that arise and that absolutely have to be addressed in all of this are emerging, and unavoidably so.

To bring this initial orienting note up to date, I began discussing possible remediation approaches to global warming as it arises from our global carbon footprint, in Part 6, partitioning that into four closely connected arenas of possible action:

• Reducing carbon footprint gas emissions and even zeroing them out to what ideally would be pre-industrial levels.
• Capturing carbon footprint chemicals already out in our global environment and causing harm, and turning them to productive and environmentally safe use, or
• Stabilizing them chemically so they cease to pose harm or risk, or
• Sequestering them in ways that would remove them from the active environment and long-term.

I focused on the first step of that list in Part 6. And my goal for this posting is to offer a comparable starting point discussion of the second entry to it here. That said, I begin this posting by adding to my Part 6 discussion, addressing a part of that narrative as it applies in a carbon capture context too. That is the role that lifecycle planning and related issues play in this overall narrative and essentially so. And I begin addressing that in a carbon footprint reduction context by posing a simple question:

• Can a green technology alternative for generating electrical power actually qualify as being green, even if it does not produce a carbon footprint of any size while in active use,
• If the carbon footprint that arise from producing that solution through its complete life cycle from the extraction of raw materials that would go into it on through producing it as a finished product, plus the carbon footprint contribution of decommissioning and recycling or discarding it and components of it when that becomes necessary, are significantly large in combined scale?
• And to push that to the extreme, can anyone reasonably consider a proposed remediation to be green overall and even if its active functioning is green, if an overall lifecycle accounting of its overall carbon footprint exceeds what it can remediatively do while in active use?

Early electrical power generating solar panels fit that pattern, and their saving grace in that was that their development and use enabled and supported the development of less lifecycle level polluting, next generation versions of them, and with subsequent such technological generations of them doing even better there.

I focused on lifecycles within carbon footprint reduction technologies there, as sources of possible constraints as to how possible remediations might be part of the problem rather than part of the solution. But let’s consider such interconnecting relationships and their consequences here in a carbon capture context and more too, for how such remediation efforts would fit into the overall pattern of the four areas where this overall source of pollution would have to be addressed, as identified above. And that includes all of the steps listed above from that of limiting carbon pollution production, on through sequestration for what is produced and captured, and with and without explicit stabilization added into this process flow.

• Carbon capture in and of itself, and addressed as if in a process and remediation vacuum is meaningless. Such efforts take on meaning and significance when they are addressed as steps in a larger overall system of processes that begin with the issues of where they would be carried out, and of what immediate carbon sources they would reduce in scale, and of what would be done with the carbon that is captured there.
• Efficiencies and inefficiencies in affecting the overall carbon footprint faced from the coordinated analysis of all of the steps in such an overall cycle, as driven here by carbon removal technologies under consideration, would determine their overall carbon footprint impact.
• That type of contextual analysis is where questions of utility and of overall remediative value would be asked and answered, in counterpart to the questions raised about solar panels as touched upon above, or any other specific puzzle piece solutions.

I am going to delve into some specific carbon capture approaches that have been proposed, starting in the next installment to this series. And I offer this posting in anticipation of that, as it is impossible to genuinely and fully evaluate the merits and demerits of any such proposed approaches, absent the type of contextual analysis that I cite here. And this type of analysis has to include the uncertainties that enter into impact evaluations here from all of the various process cycle steps that have to be included, where even initial planning efforts for large scale carbon pollution stabilization and sequestering, as a source of case in point examples, are still just works in progress and certainly as I write this.

Meanwhile, you can find this series at United Nations Global Alliance for ICT and Development (UN-GAID) 2 and at Ubiquitous computing and communications – everywhere all the time 4. And you can find related material at my Macroeconomics and Business directory pages.

Business planning from the back of a napkin to a formal and detailed presentation 57

This is my 57th posting to a series on tactical and strategic planning under real world constraints, and executing in the face of real world challenges that are caused by business systems friction and the systems turbulence that it creates (see Business Strategy and Operations – 3 and its Page 4, Page 5, Page 6 and Page 7 continuations, postings 578 and loosely following for Parts 1-56.)

I have been discussing business competition from a very specific perspective in recent installments to this series. And as part of that I have been discussing two points, as offered in Part 55 that I have combined here as:

• Issues and challenges that can develop when a competing business comes up with an in-demand and even must-have fad item, that can capture enough of the discretionary spending income of a wide enough market so as to adversely affect other businesses that sell their products for shares of those same monies. Though much of the same dynamic as would arise in that context, applies when considering high end cutting edge products too, where they tend to be purchased from discretionary income sources too (as explicitly discussed in Part 55.)

I have at least preliminarily discussed this in terms of both of the case study businesses that I have been developing and making use of in this series: a retail business, Alpha Hardware Inc. and a manufacturer, the e-Maverick Group. And that developing discussion has led me to two bullet pointed questions that I offered as I ended Part 56, which I framed in a retail store context:

• What should they carry, where their target market for the items that I write of here will be small and certainly initially so?
• And how should they make their buy and carry decisions here, so as to maximize their possible gains while minimizing their possible losses?

These questions obviously have their manufacturer’s counterparts as it is just as big a problem for a product manufacturer to have what might even be an entire production run that they cannot move, except perhaps at discounted prices. And if a product that they have invested in for being able to produce and at volume really bombs, they lose on both those items as manufactured and on the investments that they have made in setting up to manufacture them and with further expenses due as they refit their production lines again to move on.

With these issues in mind and from both a retail sales, and a manufacturer perspective, I reframe the basic issues that lead to my posing the above two questions in the first place. The goal for both types of businesses addressed here should be due diligence and risk management preparation that could limit the scales of risk and of loss there, if the adversely disruptive that would lead to such questions were to arise, while maximizing possible and achievable gain there too.

• How can these businesses become more agile and responsive so they can change over more quickly if needed, so as to limit both potential and realized loss there?
• And how can they do this in ways that would facilitate their gaining positive benefit there too?

Let’s consider those questions and their issues from the perspective of the retail business of this narrative first. Do they have to buy a new product at significant volume up-front and all at once if they want to do so at a more favorable per-item cost? Or can they test-buy first in order to check out and verify market interest in this offering, and with an option to buy into it big and at a good cost to them if the initial results from that are favorable?

That at least should mesh nicely with the due diligence and risk remediation needs of the manufacturer of such items, where what amount to test run production coupled with new product market testing by reputable retailers could help limit their potential losses too. But the key to they’re being able to make that work would be in how fast they could ramp up production if consumer interest proves to be high and those test sales are taking off. Making this work calls for tight coordination between manufacturer, wholesaler where they would be involved, and retailer and ideally with what is effectively real-time communications and information sharing among them. And a key due diligence goal there would be to provide production-to-sales flows of these products at levels that match consumer demand as it develops and changes, and with minimal disparities that would come from those consumers facing either gaps in availability or excess inventory – which would create loss potential for all businesses in the supply chain system involved there.

All of this is pretty basic and certainly as a matter of general principles. Actually applying the principles that I cite here, in real world contexts and with all of the uncertainties faced there makes all of this a lot more complex – and entirely data and communications driven. I repeatedly write in this blog about the need for business agility, flexibility and adaptability. But I have not written anywhere nearly as much about how to actually achieve any of that. I am going to delve into some of the key issues that enter into realizing these business characteristics in the next installment to this series, organizing that line of discussion in terms of how they can be realized, for how they map onto the types of within-business and business-to-business process cycles that I have been addressing here and in recent installments to this series.

Meanwhile, you can find this and related postings and series at Business Strategy and Operations – 7, and also at Page 1, Page 2, Page 3, Page 4, Page 5 and Page 6 of that directory.

Some thoughts on the nature of quantum indeterminacy, emergent properties and free will 19

This is the 19th installment that I am offering as a part of a thought piece series on a complex of issues that I see as being fundamentally interconnected: the nature of quantum indeterminacy, emergent properties and free will. (See Ubiquitous Computing and Communications – everywhere all the time 4, postings 605 and following for Parts 1-18.)

I have been successively addressing this set of topics points and possible answers to the questions that they raise in this series:

• Can free will exist in a deterministic system?
• Do the issues of determinism necessarily have to enter into discussions of emergent properties per se, and where do they arise if they do? And if they do, then how?
• And depending on how those questions would be addressed, what is the relationship between free will and emergent properties? Is free will an explicitly emergent property? And if so, what is it emergent from?

I am currently addressing the third of those points and its issues, while at least collaterally adding to my responses to the first two of them as well. And to bring this initial orienting note up to date here as I continue this narrative, I focused on goals and what they can variously mean in Part 18. As part of that, I identified three forms of uncertainty as can arise, and in either artifactual or natural systems:

A. The uncertainties implicit to any partial general theory, given the realizable impact of what it does not and cannot descriptively and predictively address as it is.
B. Uncertainties that exist in the underlying reality under consideration as they arise in quantum indeterminacy and related contexts.
C. And I add here, measurement error and related uncertainties (where all real world physical measurement has limitations in its possible level of resolution and where systems such as that of my game analogy do too and from hardware performance limitations if nothing else.)

I began presenting free will in terms of goals and as being emergent from a diversity of possible outcomes and of causally connected paths that might lead to them in Part 18, and that I add that might lead out of them too. And my goal for this posting is to build from and elaborate upon that start as I seek to address the questions posed in the third topic point as I repeat it above.

To be more precise here, I begin addressing that by offering two clarifying notes. The first is a clarification of and even expansion of uncertainty type A as listed above, that also has type C elements. And I turn to physics to outline and explain it.

Physics, like every body of science that seeks to descriptively and predictively contain observable reality, is a body of rules, principles and laws that are contextually framed according to the causally connecting patterns that can be found in the empirical data that they are supported by. And as a part of that construct, a set of basic fundamental constants have been identified, that appear and recurringly so across wide ranges of types of observations and with they’re entering into numerous and wide ranging sets of the rules, principles and laws that are in place. Such constants are considered to be building blocks to the underlying rules based system that constitutes physics for their recurring centrality there. And the best known of them are:

• The speed of light in vacuum c (as currently measured at 299 792 458 meters per second.)
• The Planck constant h (as currently measured at 6.626 070 15 × 10−34 joule second.)
• The elementary charge e (as currently measured at 1.602 176 634 × 10−19 coulomb.)
• The Boltzmann constant k (as currently measured at 1.380 649 × 10−23 joule per Kelvin.)
• And the fine constant α (which is approximately 1/137.)

Importantly here, at least as of now and with the partial theories of reality that we are limited to, these constants and their measurable values cannot be derived from underlying laws as they have been empirically arrived at. And while I mostly identify them here as if they have absolute set values across space and time, each has a plus or minus range attached to it and with the uncertainty that that adds to A as a categorical uncertainty type. And we do not and cannot know which of them if any might in fact represent more complex functions of other, deeper factors and constraints where variability might be possible in them under certain circumstances. We do not know why they have the values they show as having, beyond the specious argument that at least here in our observable reality they have values that make our being here to observe them possible.

• All three of the uncertainty types that I categorically list and discuss here are complex; none of them are simply unitary forms.

The second point that I would add here in clarification of what I offered in Part 18 can be found in how I addressed the seeming clarity of winning and losing there. First of all and as an obvious point of clarification, winning as an only resolution can only be achieved in win-win games and even then, only if all parties playing them actually achieve that goal. Zero-sum games lead to explicit wins balancing precisely against correspondingly explicit losses. But I went farther in what I said there than to just allow room for such alternative game strategy and outcome possibilities. I posited both winning and losing as simply representing states of being in games and their play, and without evaluating them beyond that; I did not add any measure or understanding of the possible relative significance that might be attributed to such states.

The above admittedly cryptic paragraph brings this line of discussion to a conceptual framework that I have been systematically developing in two other concurrently running series in this blog:

• Some Thoughts Concerning a General Theory of Business (which can be found at Reexamining the Fundamentals directory, Section VI and that directory’s Page 2 continuation, Section IX), and
• The Challenge of Knowing That To Focus On and Plan Around, and Either Strategically or Tactically (which can be found at that directory Page 2 and also in its Section IX.)

I have presented and discussed two distinct models as to how general bodies of theory can be organized and developed there, that I have identified as being open and semi-open, and I will at least begin to discuss how the lines of discussion that I have been developing here, fit into such frameworks, and open body of theory approaches in particular. And I will of necessity raise the issue of how quantum indeterminacy and its resolution to a more classical seeming solution would fit there. In anticipation of that line of discussion to come, this will mean my addressing the issues of how observership would and would not fit into these body of theory constraining and defining models.

Meanwhile, you can find this and related material at Ubiquitous Computing and Communications – everywhere all the time 4. And also see that directory’s Page 1, Page 2 and Page 3.

Looking beyond our current global crises and their specifics – addendum note 3

This is my 3rd addendum posting as offered here in follow-up to a series that I have been offering here concerning our shared globally impacting climate crisis. For the series see United Nations Global Alliance for ICT and Development (UN-GAID) and its Page 2 continuation. And I offer these addendum notes in follow-up to it at the same Page 2 directory listing.

My goal for this addendum note is to offer a few thoughts regarding tipping points and the processes and events that lead to them. 2023 has now officially been declared to have been the warmest year globally that has ever been recorded, going back to when the first such globally spanning measurements were taken in 1850. I cannot claim to have been prescient, by any means when I predicted that this would happen while we were still living through that year; anyone who was following the month by month numbers for this must have seen 2023 as record breaking. It happened. And it is likely that 2024 will break that record, or at least tie it.

What leads to this type of event? A combination of gradually trending evolutionary events and particularly for their impact where they develop to a point where disruptive shift points are reached in them, and more one-off events. And in-between are periodic events that are predictable by category if not necessarily for their precise timing. In practice, and in retrospect if nothing else, the second and third of those possibilities can in fact be one and the same, where an unexpected one-off event was not actually as novel or unpredictable to occur, at least eventually, as might have initially been assumed.

Let’s take that out of the abstract with some specific examples that relates to the consequences of global warming, as well as to its direct ongoing increase. And I begin with an example that is well known in principle and that a lot of people have written about, myself included that is consequence oriented there. That is global ice sheet melting and the melting of Greenland’s ice fields in particular. This has been known to be a source of climate change risk, for a relatively long time now and with concerns of it happening and at large scale, and analyses of the possible and probably outcomes of that happening, going back decades now. It has also been found that this is already happening now. We are now starting to more fully and accurately quantify this phenomenon, and the results that are coming from that are startling. In that regard, see:

• Ubiquitous Acceleration in Greenland Ice Sheet Calving From 1985 to 2022, which I quote from with:
• “Nearly every glacier in Greenland has thinned or retreated over the past few decades, leading to glacier acceleration, increased rates of sea-level rise and climate impacts around the globe. To understand how calving-front retreat has affected the ice-mass balance of Greenland, we combine 236,328 manually derived and AI-derived observations of glacier terminus positions collected from 1985 to 2022 and generate a 120-m-resolution mask defining the ice-sheet extent every month for nearly four decades. Here we show that, since 1985, the Greenland Ice Sheet (GrIS) has lost 5,091 ± 72 km2 of area, corresponding to 1,034 ± 120 Gt of ice lost to retreat. Our results indicate that, by neglecting calving-front retreat, current consensus estimates of ice-sheet mass balance have underestimated recent mass loss from Greenland by as much as 20%. The mass loss we report has had minimal direct impact on global sea level but is sufficient to affect ocean circulation and the distribution of heat energy around the globe. On seasonal timescales, Greenland loses 193 ± 25 km2 (63 ± 6 Gt) of ice to retreat each year from a maximum extent in May to a minimum between September and October. We find that multidecadal retreat is highly correlated with the magnitude of seasonal advance and retreat of each glacier, meaning that terminus-position variability on seasonal timescales can serve as an indicator of glacier sensitivity to longer-term climate change.”
• And to stress two points made there, this means that the Greenland Ice Sheet has lost 20% more ice mass in recent decades than anyone has thought, and with that adding up to over one trillion tons of additional ice lost there.

That addresses the consequences side of global warming. What about the causal side to this, as noted above? The land that is exposed to the ambient radiant energy of sunlight as a direct result of this melting, has a much higher albedo, or coefficient of reflectivity (and adsorption) than the ice that recently covered it did. That means this now bare ground absorbs much more of that energy than covering ice would and particularly where that would be clean ice, not affected for this by covering soot or other surface contaminants (as for example, have arrived there from the massive forest fires that struck Canada in 2023.) This absorbed energy is automatically converted to heat, which can and does conduct outward to surrounding land that is still under ice, facilitating the warming and melting of that ice too and from its undersurface on up, further lubricating its flow across the land and towards the ocean.

• What I write of there can be seen as representing action and the facilitation of further action that together would lead to what would easily become a positively reinforcing feedback cycle.

Now let’s consider one-off, or at least unpredicted if not unpredictable events for how they enter into this too. El Niño and La Niña events fit this pattern, though forecasters have become better and better at predicting them and their durations and severity. But let’s set these events aside as examples for purposes of this discussion, and consider a much less known if massively impactful possibility. And that is one that comes from some very special lakes in Africa. And I begin here by focusing on Lake Kivu: the member of that group that currently appears to pose the greatest risk and both to its immediate locale and globally. See:

• This African Lake May Literally Explode—and millions are at risk, which I quote from with:
• “Lake Kivu is a geological anomaly, a multi-layered lake whose depths are saturated with trapped carbon dioxide and methane. Only two other such lakes—Lake Nyos and Lake Monoun—share these characteristics, and both have erupted in the past 50 years, spewing a lethal cloud of gas that suffocated any humans and animals in its path. When Lake Nyos erupted in 1986, it asphyxiated nearly 2,000 people and wiped out four villages in Cameroon. Folklore in the area speaks of ‘the bad lake’ and its evil spirits that emerged to kill in an instant. Concerningly, Lake Kivu is 50 times as long as Lake Nyos and more than twice as deep. Millions live on its shoreline.”
• And “ ‘Kivu has a complicated vertical structure,” Sergei Katsev, a limnologist at University of Minnesota Duluth, explains. While ‘the top [200 feet] or so mix regularly,’ the rest of the lake remains stratified. Nearly 72 cubic miles of dissolved carbon dioxide and 14 cubic miles of methane, laced with toxic hydrogen sulfide, remain trapped in the bottom of the lake. They sit beneath a ‘main density gradient’ at 850 feet below the surface. These gasses could explode above the surface. ‘When the lake reaches 100 percent saturation—and it is currently somewhere over 60 percent—it will erupt spontaneously,’ says Philip Morkel, an engineer and founder of Hydragas Energy, which is seeking funding for a project to extract methane from the lake for electricity. ‘It’s like a boiling pot of water. It looks quiet—until it starts to bubble.’ ”

To put that in perspective for its potential global impact, a complete release there could add anywhere from two to six billion tons of greenhouse gas carbon into the atmosphere in the forms of carbon dioxide and methane, and in as short a time span as a single day, where we are currently facing the release of some 38 billion tons of that from more “conventional” sources of it already, annually.

As a second reference on this, that adds further here-pertinent detail, see this report from the journal Nature:

• How dangerous is Africa’s explosive Lake Kivu?

These articles focus on the potential value of capturing and making use of the vast stores of methane that are included in this gas pocket. But to stress the obvious, these gases remain where they are and as long as they do because of the way in which the deep waters of this lake and of all lakes of its type are stratified. Mining for methane there would inevitably lead to mixing between layers in the deeper waters there and with at least some disruption of the stability in place that has held these gasses in place, and that has enabled their vast accumulations there. This could trigger the type of event that these articles warn of, leading to all of the adverse outcomes that I write of here and probably more as well.

Yes, both articles cite such risks. But both offer points of argument in favor of capitalizing on this too. And with that said, I have to add that there are not and there cannot be any good answers her for what we can do that might limit adverse impact from this. Lake Kivu already has accumulated a sufficiently large amount of these gases in its current build-up so that a sudden massive release would be catastrophic. Mining for this successfully and without any such sudden release would still mean the controlled release of vast amounts of carbon dioxide and toxic sulfur-based gases, as well as methane as its capture would not be anything like 100% efficient. Capturing and burning the methane that is successfully captured for use there would still lead to greenhouse gas releases and increases. And any such venture would create sufficient local risk of a sudden blow-out from this effort that it would not be safe for people living near that lake to remain there. This would force what would be a vast population relocation from that entire area.

But let’s reconsider the overall numbers again for the levels of greenhouse gasses cited there. If annual anthropogenic release of such gasses into the atmosphere total some 38 billion tons and if a complete release of such pollutants from an eruption of them from Lake Kivu when it is at 100% capacity for them would add 6 billion additional tons of that to the overall environmental load faced, then a perhaps forced eruption at 60% of that maximum load would add some 3.6 billion additional tons of these pollutants onto an already overburdened system, with that leading to a sudden increase there of almost 9.5% over the “normal” load there. If the background carbon footprint load was a lot smaller, that would buffer the environment from the level of impact that this absolute level of increase would have, when compared to adding it to an already significantly distressed system.

• As matter stand now, a greenhouse gas eruption of the type that could happen now from this lake, would have much greater deleterious impact globally, than that same eruption would have had in an 1850 context.

All of the issues and complications that I write of here in this posting directly address how tipping point events can become more likely, and how they can take place and as seemingly sudden developments.

I am going to continue adding addendum note additions to my global environmental crisis series as developments warrant that. Meanwhile, you can find this and related material at Macroeconomics and Business and its Page 2, Page 3, Page 4 and Page 5 continuations. And you can also find this and related material at my directory: United Nations Global Alliance for ICT and Development (UN-GAID) and its Page 2 continuation.

Addendum note:
To put 2023 in perspective for its average annualized global temperature, I only cited our historical records in this posting when noting that this was the warmest year on record going back to 1850 when the first relatively complete and reliable records were kept on this. That is misleading. It is believed that 2023 was the warmest year that Earth has faced in at least 125,000 years as that can be ascertained from a variety of geological sources such as deep ice core analyses from long-term persistent polar ice fields. This is important to keep in mind as we consider where we are now and where we are headed as far as global warming and our response to it are concerned.

Dissent, disagreement, compromise and consensus 131 – arbitration processes and their outcomes 2

This is my 131st installment to a series on negotiating in a professional context, starting with a focus on the employee-to-employee and employee-to-business side of that as found in more individual jobs and careers contexts. See Guide to Effective Job Search and Career Development – 3 and its Page 4 continuation, postings 484 and following for Parts 1-51 for that side to this overall narrative. In that context, I have also been discussing the business side of negotiating here. See that same directory Page 4, and its postings 535 and following for Parts 52-129. And that has led me to the issues of third party mediated arbitrations, which I began addressing here in Part 130.

I discussed arbitration per se in Part 130, and why it is resorted to. And my goal for this posting is to focus on the negotiating side to arbitration and on better presenting cases to arbitrators. And to set the stage for that discussion, I note three basic assumptions that I would make here:

• Involved parties on both sides are willing to negotiate in an arbitrated context and even if they are not legally, contractually required to, and both sides will adhere to the resolution that comes from this (whether fully of their own free will or not.)
• The arbitrator in this can and will act as an honest broker.
• And both sides are given full opportunity to present their cases and to come to agreement on any points under contention where that is possible, limiting the scope of what would have to be imposed upon them through arbitrated decision.

With this noted as the context that I would discuss arbitrated negotiations in terms of, I begin with the obvious. If you are trying to reach a resolution that you would find favorable for yourself and for those who you represent, you have to negotiate with two fundamentally distinct parties: the people on the other side of the table who you are in contention with and the arbitrator who will ultimately make the determinative decisions there. What would be a best practices approach for navigating that dichotomy?

• Take the lead in negotiating with the people who you are contesting with in this, in making a genuine effort to find at least some common ground with them. This can both increase your chances of achieving a measure of what you want out of this process, and position you and your side in this as being reasonable and as being willing to come to a fair agreement. It positions you and the people who you represent as being the good guys there.
• And at the same time that you are negotiating with those who you seek an agreement resolution with, you are negotiating with the arbitrator too. I have just touched on that side of this overall process in the first of these bullet points, but to continue addressing this side of this process here, you increase your chances of getting more of what you want if you are seen as being willing to find a common ground compromise, even if the other side digs in and makes any more-directly negotiated agreement for at least some issues, impossible.

The best arbitrated resolutions are ones that both sides can come to see as being fair. Arbitrators being people, appreciate parties in disputes who seek fair and equitable resolutions. And they tend to be put off by parties in such disputes who take a going-for-blood, zero-sum approach there. That is just human nature and particularly where arbitrators seek to arrive at resolutions that are fair as well as binding.

I have offered this in general and even abstract terms, but in real world arbitrations, as is the case in real world negotiations in general, the devil is in the details. I am going to pose and address two scenarios that would take this at least somewhat out of the abstract, starting in the next installment to this series:

• A terms of service dispute where the level of details involved might leave room for compromise agreement on at least some of the issues involved, and
• A fees due dispute that might offer less wiggle room and opportunity for compromise.

Meanwhile, you can find this and related material at Page 4 to my Guide to Effective Job Search and Career Development, and also see its Page 1, Page 2 and Page 3. You can also find this and related postings at Social Networking and Business 3 and its Page 4 continuation. And also see that directory’s Page 1 and Page 2.

The challenge of knowing what to focus on and plan around, and either strategically or tactically 54

This posting is the 54th installment in a series that is grounded on the issues of better developing and organizing planning in a business, and at both a more here-and-now tactical level and at a more wide-ranging and long-term strategic level. And I have made use of that first part of this series as so stated, as a compendium model-organized starting point, for discussing general theories of business and of economics per se. See the first 55 supplemental postings that I added to the end of Section IX of Reexamining the Fundamentals 2 for Parts 1-53 of this series, as well as links to two earlier postings that it builds from for all that I have offered up to now in this. And that developing narrative has led me to a basic question that I am currently addressing:

• How can a general theory of business and of economics be developed and in ways that can be widely accepted, that would fit as closely as possible to an open body of theory paradigm?

Ongoing discussion of that and its issues has led me to this subtopic point:

2. What if a phenomenological property that has been characterized as being describable as a single factor: a single recognized variable has been misunderstood and inadequately analyzed as a result? This becomes an issue where such an in-fact assembly of in-principle separable factors contains greater structural and functional complexity than has been understood for it, so the wrong supposedly there-fundamental variables have been analyzed and in the wrong way.

To round out this initial orienting note, I have most recently been discussing the issues and possibilities that come from how this follow-up question to that might best be answered:

• How would we best arrive at and construct a simple systems approach for descriptively and predictably thinking about business and economic systems that would be counterpart to the ideal gas laws for what they descriptively and predictively model and for how they can be elaborated upon in the development of more inclusive bodies of theory?

I have focused on the open body of theory side of that, leaving parallel discussion of its semi-open counterparts for follow-up discussion that I will build from this. And I focused in an open body of theory context as note here, in Part 53, on a physical systems example that I have been exploring for its wider illustrative value: the ideal gas laws and complicating variations of them that emerging empirical evidence has led to. My goal for this posting is to offer and at least briefly discuss a business and economics counterpart to that physical systems example. And as I noted in Part 52, that represents a point in this discussion where I will further consider both the atomos and the axiomatic sides of general bodies of theory.

I begin discussing all of this with a posited counterpart to the ideal gas laws, as can be found in competitive market-facing businesses and the markets they compete for shares of sales and profits in. And the example that I would pursue here is the much praised and equally much vilified invisible hand of the marketplace conceptualization of Adam Smith.

To start this, let’s operationalize that precept in rules based terms:

• Markets and their consumer members demand and purchase product offerings that meet their needs, desires and preferences and at lowest cost to themselves while still meeting their product quality standards.
• The demand side of this creates financial incentive for manufacturing businesses and the retailers that they supply, to offer those products.
• But the total sales opportunity that any such products or product types might be able to realize is always going to be limited by the financial resource limits of, and the purchasing prioritizations and pricing demands of those marketplace buyers.
• These limitations place pressure on product providers to limit what they would charge for what they offer with that leading to openly competitive pricing.
• When there is a low enough level of overall competition for the sale of a product type that is in demand in a marketplace and where alternatives to it are competitively possible, this incentivizes new competitors to move into that market opportunity and certainly if they can offer the same or better for less to the customer and still make a reasonable profit from that, making this feasible for them.
• The overall consequence of this dynamic would be that businesses compete for sales shares but in market contexts that would constrain and limit their pricing and their profitability to what the market with its demands will bear.

Think of this as a counterpart to the ideal gas laws, and as a conceptual approach that can offer direct value under a wide range of normative circumstances – just as the ideal gas laws do. But just as is the case for those physical systems laws, this conceptual model faces circumstances that glaringly violate it. And it is a lot easier to unambiguously understand, characterize and quantify such exceptions where a baseline simply model is in place that can be used for comparative purposes – at least in principle.

In this case and as one source of challenge to this model that would call for its elaboration, deviations from the Adam Smith simple market model come from the systematic impact of outside forces that this model does not account for or address. And I turn to the examples of prescription drugs and their market prices as a source of confounding examples here, that I offer as counterpart to the inversion temperature phenomena of ideal gas law violations as already discussed here in this series.

• The Adam Smith model presumes that producing and providing businesses compete on a level playing field and that none of the competitors there starting out with biasing advantages. But this is not true for pharmaceuticals and for a variety of reasons, and with patent protection for new(er) brand name drugs only serving as part of that.
• Customers have to have real voices in demanding competitive prices where alternative options (e.g. brand name and generic) are available. But large areas of this marketplace are built in ways that limit this. Most people, and I pursue a United States drug sales model here by way of example, purchase prescription medications through insurance policies. But these organizations face pressures and limitations to how much they can demand lower, more competitive pricing. Medicare and Medicaid: the two national government based healthcare plans are even blocked by law as I write this, from being able to negotiate drug prices for what they cover, and for what their enrolled members will have to pay out of pocket for their shares of these costs.
• The same drugs that are sold at inflated prices in the United States, are sold in other countries and for less and even much less – and even when batches of them sold in those countries are manufactured in the same facilities, by the same people, using the same raw materials and with them produced with the same equipment. But it is only now as I write this, that it looks like Americans will be allowed to legally purchase such drugs from Canada, as a case in point alternative source, with its lower prices. Intensive ongoing lobbying from the pharmaceutical industry in the United States has kept such purchasing illegal for all Americans.

How can the impact of this and other perturbations from what would be expected in a free and open market be quantified? That would require data that essentially all pharmaceutical manufacturers maintain as inviolably secret and proprietary business intelligence. But where such information does leak into public visibility, its actual costs to manufacture and related data can be applied to simply model systems that would lead to cost range calculations that consumers would face there, if the prescription drug market was free and open, as per the Adam Smith model. Such analyses help to shed light on the complicating and skewing factors here.

And with this, I have raised a series of understanding-confounding and complicating issues that can enter into shaping semi-open bodies of theory, and with unaddressed but impactful outcomes-shaping factors, data availability issues and more entering into this.

I am going to reframe this developing narrative in the next installment to this series in terms of semi-open bodies of theory. That, I add, represents a point in this discussion where I will further consider both the atomos and the axiomatic sides of general bodies of theory and I will discuss both open and semi-open possibilities in those terms. And bringing that complex of issues more fully into this line of discussion will all but compel my further addressing the issues of agreement and of acceptance here as well.

As a final thought here, Adam Smith’s invisible hand of the marketplace has been honored and respected to the extent that it has because it clearly articulates the basic working principles that would drive the economics of an ideal marketplace – of a marketplace as we would like such forums to be for their openness and certainly where businesses can and do compete for sales with good, competitive products at good, competitive prices. That same approach is reviled and dismissed because simple and ideal rarely apply and certainly as a primary realized pattern in the real world – and certainly in real marketplaces, barring countervailing factors that would compensate for the types of systematic outcomes skewing such as the ones that I write of here. I will address the implications of this in upcoming discussion of semi-open bodies of theory too.

Meanwhile, you can find this and related material at my Reexamining the Fundamentals directory and its Page 2 continuation, as topics Sections VI and IX there, and with this posting and its series specifically included as supplemental additions to Section IX there.

Aligning human innovation and technological advancement with larger environmental needs 6

I have been addressing climate change and other global challenges in a succession of interrelated series in this blog, and I offer this one as a continuation to that narrative progression. My goal here is to discuss possible technology based approaches to affecting positive change here, their possible implementations, and their providers. See United Nations Global Alliance for ICT and Development (UN-GAID) 2 for Parts 1-5 of this series.

I focused in Part 1 and Part 2 on two of the most significant sources of environmental challenge that we collectively face: our seemingly ever-expanding carbon footprint as it drives global warming, and our equally expanding problem of global pollution from plastic in its many forms. And I ended Part 2 by offering these to-address topic points:

1. I am going to at least categorically discuss approaches that might be considered and attempted in remediating such challenges, and ones that are already being deployed to address them.
2. That is where detailed understandings of the issues faced and of how they might best be acted upon have to be addressed. That is where broad generalities as favored by policy makers in summits and related forums, and in their within-nation planning have to meet with and constructively respond to our day-to-day realities and actionably so. And that is where complex and even seemingly contradictory details that arise and that absolutely have to be addressed in all of this are emerging, and unavoidably so.
3. Actually addressing those challenges will call for our more fully acknowledging, understanding and actively responding to them and even in the face of our having to challenge our own short-term interests – and certainly if we are to effectively and sustainably address them so as to achieve long-term benefit.
4. But at least as importantly, this effort has to include active consideration of possible side effects and collateral changes that developing and deploying possible remediation tools might bring – where some of them as proposed could be as bad as or even worse than the initial problems that they are intended to help solve.
5. Then moving further forward and to put this overall line of discussion into context here, I will discuss the Who and How of providing, selecting and using, and performance reviewing these tools and their technologies here.
6. And I will discuss trade-offs in all of this too.

To bring this initial orienting note up to date, I have been discussing both of the categorically stated sources of challenge that I address in Parts 1 and 2 of this series from the perspective of the first two of the topics points that I am pursuing here. And that has led me, as I said at the end of Part 5 with the following, for what I will begin to discuss in this series installment:

• I am going to list and discuss approaches to limiting carbon pollution production, and carbon sequestration and more, starting in the next installment to this series, as well as briefly returning to and reconsidering some of the more specific possible remediations that I made note of in my series: Looking Beyond Our Current Global Crises and Their Specifics, (which can be found at my United Nations Global Alliance for ICT and Development (UN-GAID) directory.)

I begin addressing that complex of issues by taking a high level, broadly stated approach to what can be and what has to be done there, mirroring what I offered in Part 4 in a plastic pollution context. And I begin that by posing an at-least conceptually simple and straight forward question. What are the main building block pieces that could go into developing an overall, effective, sustainable remediation of our carbon footprint problem, and one with both local and national, and global reach? And I respond to that with this four point list:

• Reducing carbon footprint gas emissions and even zeroing them out to what ideally would be pre-industrial levels.
• Capturing carbon footprint chemicals already out in our global environment and causing harm, and turning them to productive and environmentally safe use, or
• Stabilizing them chemically so they cease to pose harm or risk, or
• Sequestering them in ways that would remove them from the active environment and long-term.

I begin addressing that list and its puzzle pieces to remediation here with the first of them. And I do so by noting that different pollution reduction approaches are needed there, depending on precisely how and where those greenhouse gasses are being produced. So any first step in addressing that point has to be grounded in a deep and detailed understanding of the How and Where of this and with prioritization placed on addressing the most serious, pollution creating sources. What are they now, as I write this, and what are their relative levels of contribution to this overall problem? Turning to this US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) study: Sources of Greenhouse Gas Emissions, the top five for that are:

• Electrical power production with that accounting for 30% of anthropogenic greenhouse gas releases,
• Transportation with that primarily coming from our use of internal combustion engines, at 26% of such pollution releases,
• Industry, as a complex and multi-facetted problem for this, at 21%,
• Commercial and residential sources and with much of that coming from heating and air conditioning, at 12%, and
• Agriculture at 9%.

This partitions out sources of carbon footprint gasses at the level of industry sectors, to use that term in a more general sense (as is done in that report.) And that makes this report and its findings a first step analysis of the How and Where of this, and just that.

Let’s start with electrical power generation, and with two of its major culprits here: coal and petrochemical burning as an initial source of energy there, that would be converted to electrical power. Two generally stated possibilities come immediately to mind there:

• Replacement of old hydrocarbon fuel burning power plants that require such resources to work, with green energy alternatives such as wind and solar power, and geothermal energy generation.
• And transitional approaches such as efforts to reduce the amount of coal that is required in order to produce a given number of kilowatts of power, in what is still basically a more conventional power plant, but one refitted to burn a combination of (low sulfur and therefore less polluting) coal and ammonia.

Focusing on the first of those possibilities, what are the timeframes that would be needed for switching over to green there? That would depend on where this is going to be done, where direct monetary costs can only be considered to represent one factor there. To start, it has to be realistically possible to build and operate green technology alternatives and at sufficient scale to replace existing systems, for any of these approaches or any like them to succeed. Geothermal can and does work and very effectively in places such as Iceland, but it cannot be deployed and used where subsurface geothermal energy sources are not available and with that including virtually all long-term geologically stable areas that lack nearby volcanism, plate subduction zones or the like. Solar power generation cannot succeed in areas that do not have adequate year-around solar energy to rely upon for powering that. And wind power cannot work and reliably so if there are no reliable winds to work with.

I will address the issues of buy-in and related challenges when I reach the above repeated Point 5 in this overall discussion, simply noting that finding potentially viable approaches here from a technological and engineering perspective is only part of what has to be resolved here. And I will complete this line of discussion at least for here in this posting by making note of the obvious. Effective remediation here, at this step in this overall problem with reduction in carbon footprint pollution production has to be site and context specific and both in addressing the facilities and types of them that pollute here, and where and how they are located. And that brings in a lot more than just contextual technological and engineering issues.

Note: I raised the possibility of adding ammonia into coal as a means of reducing adverse climate impact in Part 119 of the series that this posting is appended to, where I cited and referenced an initiative under development in Japan to do precisely that. The important point that I raised there, as a cautionary note for this approach, was that any such remediation step should only be considered or used as a stepping-stone, interim measure if the goal for its deployment is to achieve longer-term benefit. When solutions like it are deployed as long-term fixes, they become part of the problem, rather than part of the solution.

That point offered and both for clarification and to provide references to that part of this discussion, I am going to turn to and address the issues of capturing, stabilizing and sequestering carbon pollution in the next installment in this series, continuing my focus on electrical power generation as a major categorical source of carbon footprint gases as I do so. And I will discuss lifecycle issues in this developing context, and with all four of the categorically stated carbon footprint remediation possibilities that I listed above, addressed in that: reducing carbon based pollution itself, included.

Then, looking ahead beyond that, I will at least briefly discuss the remaining four major polluting categories as cited in the above US EPA report, as I complete this overall line of discussion within this series’ narrative.

Meanwhile, you can find this series at United Nations Global Alliance for ICT and Development (UN-GAID) 2 and at Ubiquitous computing and communications – everywhere all the time 4. And you can find related material at my Macroeconomics and Business directory pages.

Rethinking exit and entrance strategies 60: keeping an effective innovative focus while approaching and going through significant business transitions 50

This is my 60th installment to a series that offers a general discussion of business transitions, where an organization exits one developmental stage or period of relative strategic and operational stability, to enter a fundamentally different next one (see Business Strategy and Operations – 3 and its Page 4, Page 5, Page 6 and Page 7 continuations, postings 559 and loosely following for Parts 1-59.)

I have been discussing change: gradual and evolutionary, and disruptively revolutionary and reorienting in this series, and how they both enter into and inform business change as a whole where true transformative business transitions might be needed. And I have been pursuing this overall narrative to a significant degree in terms of a specific if contextually changing and evolving case study framework that I have been identifying as ClarkBuilt Inc.

I began this narrative with this business facing need for entering into fundamental change, where it had been and still fundamentally was a cutting edge technology and product offering business – but where cracks were beginning to appear in their basic business model for how those fundamentals were changing. They entered into and went through a transitional change in which they continued to manufacture for themselves and with a cutting edge focus, but where they also started to offer design services for other manufacturers, trading on their name brand and reputation and their known strength in depth for this. But ClarkBuilt and its context have changed since then and both for its marketplace and for its competition for the contextual side of that. And one of the consequences of that is that ClarkBuilt is not actually as cutting edge as it once was, and as it has continued to think of itself as being. They have reached a point in their development where they need to change again and from their fundamentals on out: from how their owners and managers, and their staff in general see and understand this business and for what they do. And that has led to a restatement of the basic bullet pointed description of this business as I offered in draft form at the end of Part 59:

• ClarkBuilt Inc.: a business that has reached a point in its development, as previously discussed here, where its owning founders have to make some fundamental decisions as to what type of business they have now, and what type they will have moving forward: as a manufacturer of more mainstreamed products and just that, or as a newly reinvigorated producer of more cutting edge products again,
• That still maintains a design shop side of their business, but one that explicitly caters to the needs of client businesses that fit along a wider range of an innovation acceptance diffusion curve for who their own clients are now.

That, I stress here, was only offered as a draft version possibility. And it was with this point of understanding in mind that I concluded Part 59 with this to-address note:

• The real decision making of this draft rewrite as such, is probably going to be in the framing of its first half, where impactful change-demanding decisions are demonstrably needed. I am going to continue this line of discussion in the next installment to this series where I will reconsider that rewrite as I continue this case study.

And I begin addressing that by highlighting and addressing the single most important and contentious text that is included in that rewrite as a whole: “as a manufacturer of more mainstreamed products and just that, or as a newly reinvigorated producer of more cutting edge products again.”

I did not rewrite the basic description of this business in settled and agreed-to terms. I draft rewrote it as a description of disagreement and even outright rancor, discussion and withdrawal from that and return to it, negotiations, and hopefully with more unifying agreement to come.

• What does cutting edge mean now in their industry and business sector and for the marketplace and its customer members who demand that?
• What would it take to return to being a cutting edge manufacturer there? This, obviously, would require that they develop at least one dramatically new offering and even type of new offering that could be developed into a product line, that would bring them back into that game. But assuming they have a real possibility there and at least one new such product, what would they need to be able to do to actually develop it into a marketable offering that they could offer at an effective price point for that market, and at sufficient volume so as to meet consumer needs, and with good quality control and other due diligence considerations actively in place?
• Could they finance this on their own and from their own reserves and other resources or would they have to reach out for additional funding? And if so how? And if so, what strings might be attached to they’re receiving such support?
• Or should they simply transition into being a more mainstreamed product designer and producer and capitalize on the fact that the overall market for such products is and always will be much larger, than can be possible for cutting edge New?
• Or as a third possibility should they in fact pursue both approaches, expanding their production line capabilities from profits from their already more mainstreamed products to fund their riskier but potentially more profitable per-unit sold cutting edge ventures?
• And in all three of these possible scenarios, their design shop would provide an added measure of fiscal security to the business from its revenue flows with their income generation and profits.

I wrote above in this posting of the discussions and negotiations to come as the possibilities of the above draft rewrite are debated and decided upon, and with this description of that process as it might be faced:

• Disagreement and even outright rancor, discussion and withdrawal from that and return to it, negotiations, and hopefully more unifying agreement to come.

And I intentionally phrased that as starting with what could be harsh disagreement at least to start as “traditionalists” in these discussions would seek to keep to the original cutting edge vision of their business, and as “realists” would demand that ClarkBuilt simply move on from that. Then I offered my bullet pointed three scenarios list of possibilities with a goal of making them all look possible (even if challenging) and with a hybrid approach – once again, a reasonable option. The most important point of detail that I could cite there, is that I sought to frame the possibilities in that list in ways that would not leave any of the approaches espoused by any of the competing parties in this debate, presented as if they would push this business over the edge of a cliff.

My goal in that was to frame those possibilities in terms that are as non-confrontational as possible, so as to limit any initial rancor and facilitate productive conversation and negotiations as needed, and from as early on in this process as possible – and with a goal of that increasing the chances of best possible resolutions being achieved and sustainably so. I am going to continue this line of discussion from there, in the next installment to this series. Meanwhile, you can find this and related postings and series at Business Strategy and Operations – 7, and also at Page 1, Page 2, Page 3, Page 4, Page 5 and Page 6 of that directory.

Telecommuting reconsidered as a new normal 52

This is my 52nd posting to a series that has its roots in this blog going back to its beginning, and certainly in my thinking. More concretely and as a matter of written record, this has its roots here, going back at least as far as late 2012 when I thought through and then wrote and posted a short series on a possible business model that would take online and remote working to its logical conclusion, with the possibilities of an essentially entirely online and remote workplace business: a true telecompany. See Outsourcing and Globalization, postings 48 and following for my series: Telecommuting and the Marketplace Transition to the Telecompany. And you can find this series at that same directory page starting with its posting 70.

I have been successively discussing each of a set of three topics points in this series:

1. How would the strategic, tactical and operational decisions that would go into addressing these types of change affect the business, and both going into and coming out of such a transition?
2. How would disruptions and potential disruptions be managed while this type of transition is actually being carried out?
3. And equally importantly, what does this mean from the perspective of the human impact of all of this, that the hands-on and managerial employees at a business would face when and as these changes are planned and carried out?

And to bring this initial orienting note up to date, I began explicitly discussing Point 3 of that list in Part 51, where I focused on the importance of the hands-on employees and managers in this, for how their participation in the businesses that they work for make the before, during and after of any business transition possible.

Point 3 and the issues that I raised in Part 51 can be understood and approached from two directions: that of the employing business and that of those employees themselves. My goal for this posting is to continue to address the business perspective side of this as started there and with a goal of coordinately discussing both sides to that in this series. That noted, I continue this line of discussion here, with obvious:

• It is the people who actually carry out the tasks and work flows of them that make that business function and succeed, and who have to be able to enact the changes that enter into any business transition there to make it succeed too. They have to be able to effectively and smoothly transition into carrying out any New that arises from this at day-to-day and longer timeframe operational and tactical levels. They have to be able to make these switchovers succeed and as smoothly and non-disruptively as possible as that business seeks to continue to meet the needs of its customers and its marketplace – and those of any business-to-business supply chain and other partners. And they need to be provided with the resources required for all of this, and realistic opportunity to make effective use of those resources too.

The capacity and the flexibility needed for actually achieving all of this has to be built into the transition plans that are developed, with the How and the By Whom of that mapping in functional detail into the What of it and with that mapped out in actionable detail. I write here of operationalizing due diligence and risk management at the hands-on and managerial levels where such processes actually take place when they are carried through upon. And I add that this all has to be feedback and response driven. That means fully involving staff and its members as essential stakeholders in planning and carrying out a transition here, and that means actively communicating with them and in all directions: top-down, bottom-up and laterally as that becomes necessary too. And the more disruptive a possible emergent challenge is in this overall process, the more important lateral communications are likely to be there as unexpected issues are clarified and as solutions to them that can work across affected parts of the business are proposed, implemented and results-verified.

What I am outlining here is a basic and even generic game plan for moving forward and with course corrections in that as needed. Actually planning and executing on anything like this is going to have to be grounded in the specific details of the business carrying this out, its history and its staff, its business sector and its market and business-to-business contexts and more. I am going to turn in the next installment to this series to address the issues raised here again and at this same conceptual level as in this posting, but from the employee and manager perspective. Then and with both of these lines of discussion in place, I am going to begin fleshing out this overall approach from a more business-individualized perspective.

Meanwhile, you can find this and related postings and series at Outsourcing and Globalization.