Reverse engineering a thought process

This chapter was particularly difficult to write because I wanted to describe a a rational approach to creating an e-business from scratch, while, at the same time, actively trying to create an e-business myself (to use as a real life example and a proof of concept). The problem was that the way I was describing how it should be done wasn't the way I was actually going about it.

What I then had to do was to reverse engineer the thinking processes I'd been using to create an e-business, to see why it was differed from what I'd written. To my surprise, I discovered I'd slipped into a top down approach when describing what had to be done, yet, in real life, I'd been using a bottom up approach.

The difference hinged on the way I'd described a solution space. In describing what it is and how it can be used, I'd made the mistake of treating the solution space as a static environment that contains a number of different possible solutions that are selected from.

This is a conventional, top down approach that first creates possible solutions and then uses some form of decision theory to select between them. In other words, I was seeing the solutions space as a place to hold a number of possible business ideas, which can be selectively tried out.

By reversing engineering my thinking process, I realised that I wasn't starting off by creating a list of possible e-business solutions. What I was actually doing was to treat the solution space as a dynamic environment where components are thrown together and business solutions allowed to manifest by themselves out of the mix – my solution space was a dynamic space from which e-business solutions evolve spontaneously.

However, understanding what I was doing was one thing; being able to describe it, quite another. I was completely stumped for a simple way to describe how a dynamic solution space works. Then, out of the blue, from one of the tables in the virtual cafe, came a perfect example of a dynamic solution space being used to create paths on a university campus.