Business process hacking

Concepts from computing applied to modern business operations

In computing there are certain concepts that, in my opinion, increasingly so, have relevance and applicability to how we operate our businesses in terms of architecture, but even more so in operational processes.

I believe that trend of increasing applicability of computing principles to business is due to the growing share of intangible value creation of total value (tangible + intangible). Our world has changed, is doing so still and will probably not stop any time soon. The modern digital world introduced the general public to intangible value, automation and AI progressed it to be created in a higher frequency and amplitude, thus intensity at a progressing rate.

The concept of business process hacking thus derives those principles from computing, that essentially enable these technologies of intangible value creation to function.

Here, we will be looking at two of many, but two that are of essential vitality to modern computing as well as architecture of processes at a scale (“I’m looking at you Netflix, Amazon et cetera, not at you, you cobol based nightmare of non-kettle based garbage that’s used for some weird reason all over the United states governmental infrastructure.”)

The Unix principle describes how a program should be designed to be as expressive as possible and absolutely limit itself to one application. Basically, make one tool to do one thing good — don’t make one tool very complex with many many functions and try to do everything with it. It seems as though there is an inverse parabolic relationship between the two functions of how much complexity in application vs. how much potential efficiency.

A hammer shouldn’t even be considered for use for fixing a broken vase, yet it is what many operational processes aim to achieve. No departmentalisation, no specialisation leads to complete and utter implosion of potential efficiency, of course absolutely disregarding effectiveness of said processes. It seems rather ridiculous, but limitation of transforming resources in operations is limitation in efficiency, which is why such ineffective processes even exist.

Enter nowadays and the coming future, where automation and intangible value creation will most likely be tooled for bridging resource gaps in operational processes (oh what a place for efficiency concerned Germans). Just earlier mentioned limitations to efficiency would be highly diminished, as the inverse relationship to rising transforming resources in an operation suggests.

Pipelining is a principle in Unix, that allows one program to take the output of another program as its input. Therefore, chains of transforming resources, here programs (in actuality the flow of electrons through logic-gates), are simply written and chained to achieve complexity of systems. (Which does make a lot more sense, now doesn’t it?) Applying this principle to business processes, it may seem as though jobs and human positions could easily become repetitive and a remnants of orweillian fragments, but humans aren’t computers.

Human basic programming is literally more complex, if taken DNA, but even the neuronal activity work not completely like a binary based silicon system. I’d assume that human complexity is inevitably greater and to expand over a lifetime, compared to most if not all silicon based systems so far. The capacity for humans to learn may be impeded and the capacity to perform physical actions is obviously so, but the intangible value creation that are happening inside our brains, far outreach any value creation at this point in time. Gold is only worth something because the idea of beauty and scarcity is attributed to it, but in a world of relative abundance, it increases in obsoleteness.

Take any of the proposed singularity technologies, look closely and see how they will likely enable each other in a relatively short period of time. Smart AI would likely be able to solve fusion and nanotechnology and maybe even mind uploading. Having nanotechnology, we can actually physically now upload our minds (if even possible), or solve climate change in no-time, while having the literal source of energy for stars in the palm of our hands. (Look up “Ben Goertzel”, afterwards “Lex Fridman” and follow the white rabbit)

Pipelining and the Unix principle are already two great examples of how the computing realm can inspire and optimise the business world. There are more and you will find them when you look closely at how things worked in terms of computers in the early 90’s, when capacity for chips was so much more limited. These principles should give you a fresh perspective to view your own processes and see if there may be any room of optimisation in them.

– Stellar Explorer on the odyssey through space.

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