Chapter 7
Boundaries of the solution space
A static, top down solution space
A top down solution space is simply a mental construct with which to visualise a rich search area when searching for a solution when a goal has been specified. It is a static space to hold the most likely solutions.
Figure 7.1 illustrates a typical, top down solution space that relies upon using historical information to find a profitable e-business solution. The boundary conditions are such that only profitable e-businesses are included in the solution space as, by definition, these must have solved the problem of becoming profitable.
Figure 7.1
In this example of a top down solution space, the single boundary condition is that the business should all be profitable. Therefore all businesses within the solution space contain profitable solutions
Such a top down solution space – as illustrated by figure 7.1 – is used by Industrial Age business strategists to find business solutions for success. They isolate successful companies in an area of business they are interested in, put them into the solution space and then examine them closely to look for pointers to successful ideas, strategies or tactics.
However, this is a top down approach, where the solutions within the solution space have been tried and proven. E-business is too new and too volatile to be able to use this kind of solution space, it needs a solution space that contains promising ideas, solutions that perhaps nobody has tried before? The difficulty though is to know what is and what is not a promising idea.
What boundary conditions would need to be imposed to create a solution space that included only good ideas and excluded all the bad ideas? If we could arrange such a space, it would allow us to concentrate our efforts more efficiently and not waste our time on dead-end ventures.
To do this, a more generic version of the solution space will be needed. This is illustrated in figure 7.2, where the boundary conditions are shown as creating a gateway into the space. The objects that satisfy the boundary conditions are allowed to go through the gateway into the space and those that don't are kept out.
Figure 7.2
The generic form of the top down solution space, illustrating that the boundary conditions act like a gate to let certain objects in and keep other objects out
What is needed with this top down approach is a way to separate good ideas from bad ideas. But, this assumes that it is possible to work out what the critical criteria for success are. We don't know this.
In the volatile world of e-business, nobody can know what these criteria should be. This is self evident, because if it were possible to work out the boundary conditions for separating good ideas from bad ideas everyone would be able to become rich and Venture Capital companies wouldn't make mistakes.