[HN Gopher] Wardley Maps-illustrated through Gerstner
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Wardley Maps-illustrated through Gerstner
        
       Author : luu
       Score  : 16 points
       Date   : 2023-05-26 05:17 UTC (1 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (juliusgamanyi.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (juliusgamanyi.com)
        
       | nologic01 wrote:
       | Wardley maps and the general effort to represent human
       | organization using ontologies (e.g., Business Model Canvas) are
       | quite fascinating (and useful, necessary etc). Yet it strikes me
       | that the whole ontology and mapping effort movements miss an
       | important feedback loop that would elevate these beyond the
       | minimal: "here is another meaningful way to connect some dots on
       | a graph".
       | 
       | What is missing is a widely available empirical basis offering,
       | minimally, validation from actual business developments. For that
       | you need lots of relevant data, pooled from a large number of
       | business projects over long periods of time. Proprietariness and
       | cost are probably the main reasons we don't have that.
        
         | asmithmd1 wrote:
         | In short, is all this just fancy BS?
         | 
         | I have been following Simon Wardley on Twitter and read most of
         | his blog posts about mapping and maybe kind of worked through
         | his examples - so I am not any kind of expert and had never
         | used them before. I was introduced by a client to the roof
         | truss industry. Here is a link to one corner of an entire
         | ecosystem: https://www.tpinst.org/
         | 
         | Just to help me make sense of an industry that I was completely
         | unfamiliar with, I mapped it from lumber producers all the way
         | to home owners. I showed the map to my client and just briefly
         | explained what the axis were. He was able to clarify my
         | understanding and point out where other players fit in that he
         | had not mentioned before. By realizing that different players
         | will fight commodification, we could see their likely moves.
         | Time will tell if we are correct.
         | 
         | So my take-away is that it is useful. I went from complete
         | ignorance of an industry that has a new technology being
         | introduced, to making reasonable guesses about the likely moves
         | of incumbents in just 2-3 hours.
        
         | Randomizer42 wrote:
         | Obtuse
        
         | markmaglana wrote:
         | Astute observation!
         | 
         | I've had a similar issue with the Business Model Canvas which,
         | while very useful in visualizing a business' model, leaves me
         | hanging and a bit uncomfortable because, as you said, there are
         | no (or incomplete) hard data to back up its claims.
         | 
         | On the other hand, if we were to consider these tools as just
         | hypotheses makers and validate those hypotheses with the
         | company's financials (among other things), I think they'd be a
         | very valuable component of a very able business management
         | toolkit.
        
       ___________________________________________________________________
       (page generated 2023-05-27 23:01 UTC)