This brief overview of the realms, perspectives, and applications of the 3-4-model in the analysis of a business concept is, at this stage, only a very general introduction. It offers only a brief and highly abstract overview of the basic concept of the 3-4-model and provides only a limited number of examples. It is evident that there is a need for a more detailed and comprehensive introduction to the model, which will enable a fuller understanding of its content and applications.
In order to understand the model more deeply and to really be able to apply it fully, a number of additional questions arise:
- What functions or tasks that need to be fulfilled repititively actually exist?
- If there are always the same tasks, but performed in different ways, are there an infinite number of tasks? Or only a limited number? What might they be, and can they be grouped?
- And what exactly happens within the perspectives? What are all these "elements", "interfaces", "evaluations"?
- How do you recognize what is important to consider and what can be neglected for the time being?
- Understanding the three realms in more depth: Can the differentiation into realms be deepened? What is the point of the realms just mentioned? Behave all elements within a realm really identically? What can we learn from them?
- And how do you look at the whole thing over time?
- How does the model actually help in forecasting? How reliable is such a forecast?
In addition to a deeper understanding of the 3-4-model itself, further questions arise with regard to the consequences that can be derived from it:
- What does a company actually look like from the perspective of the 3-4-model and how does it develop?
- What does the 3-4 model mean for typical management issues such as innovation management?
- What is economic growth from the perspective of the 3-4-model?
- How can intrinsic values be aggregated in order to arrive at a valuation of an economy?
- How does homo economics fit into the 3-4-model and what are markets, supply and demand from the perspective of the 3-4-model
The 3-4-model can also be used to think systematically about new technological and social developments. On the one hand, it allows us to gain a new understanding of new developments in the past. What insights can be gained by using the 3-4-model to look at the major technological transformations of the past? Interesting candidates are, of course, basic technological issues such as transportation systems, energy supply, and communication systems.
Or you can look at the development of individual companies from the perspective of the 3-4-model. Why is Apple so successful? What does the 3-4-model say about the development of companies like Amazon, Uber or Airbnb? Building on this, what insights can be gained from this new understanding of past developments for today's open questions about the future? What conclusions can be drawn from the 3-4-model when looking at new phenomena and technologies such as...
- ... Artificial Intelligence?
- ... Autonomous Driving?
- ... Virtual Reality?
- ... Renewable Energy and the transition towards it?
Finally, the analytical approach of the 3-4-model can be abstracted even further, thereby leaving the context of business-oriented applications. Following this path of thought, you come to the considerations that we present here as “thinking tools” and you enter other branches of science. What if there was a universal principle behind this approach? Can you apply the analytical approach of the 3-4-model beyond business and economics? What conclusions would then be reached in the natural sciences or in other social sciences?
The development of the model and the findings that can be derived from it, just like the content of this website, is what you would call a “work in progress”. Much of the in-depth content is already available in detail and “only” needs to be prepared for publication here. Others are only available in outline form and require considerably more work from us. Accordingly, this website or publication will continue to develop step by step and will gradually be supplemented with further content. We can therefore only encourage interested readers to visit this website from time to time and check for news. Alternatively, you can follow the author on LinkedIn, where we will regularly post important new content.
We also welcome comments or questions. If you are interested in direct support in the development of a specific new business concept, please contact us personally.
How the model was created
The 3-4-model for business concepts is based on more than 30 years of practical experience in strategy consulting for large and small companies as well as startups - mentoring them as well as starting my own companies. It was given a special boost a few years ago when we wanted to model a realistic transformation of the energy system in a multi-agent simulation as part of a research project. We wanted to combine the physical reality of the power grid with the realistic behavior of the economic actors, enabling the grid to change dynamically depending on the actions of the economic agents. We also wanted to be able to compare different business concepts to prove that today's dominant, centralized control system of the power grid will no longer be needed in a future energy supply consisting of local sources and consumers, and will even be the more inefficient solution in the future. Ultimately, we wanted to allow the agents to create new business concepts and change their behavior in the simulation, without having to hardcode them into the agents in advance, as is usually the case. To do this, however, you have to combine a very precise understanding of business concepts, the agents, their behavior, and the relevant physics. This was not possible with the existing scientific foundations regarding business models. So we created our own foundations, which eventually led to the formulation of the 3-4-model presented here.
In the last five years since the basic features of the model were developed, I have used it in more than 50 projects in collaboration with clients, and it has been very helpful to me and has been very well received by the clients.
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