When you study physics there is a chance that at some point you will be told a version of the Spherical Cow joke. Here is a version I sort of remember being told at university:

There once was a farmer and a theoretical physicist, and they were friends from childhood who kept up a regular correspondence, writing back and forth to one another. One year the farmer was having trouble with the quality of the milk from his heard. So he wrote to the cleverest person he knew, his friend the theoretical physicist, asking what should be done. Time went by, and then eventually a thick envelope arrived from his friend containing a paper written to address the problem. It began with the words ‘Assume a Spherical Cow’.

Hilarious right? The joke has its own Wikipedia page, Spherical Cow, which explains (it’s helpful when jokes are explained) that it is about how physicists sometimes like to use simple ‘toy models’ to begin to explain complex phenomena.

Either its the education, or the tendency in ones character that leads to the education, but lots of people who are interested in science like to use this simple first, complex later style of thinking in other domains. myself included.

Take business for example - most of us who make a living are working in some kind of business, wether it is labelled that way or not. And there are helpful ‘toy models’ of a business that can help us take a step back and figure out how things work (or might not be working). A good example is from a book called ‘The Personal MBA’ by Josh Kaufman. Chapter 1 begins with introducing an overview of a business having five parts:

1. Value Creation - Discovering what people need or want, then creating it.
2. Marketing - Attracting attention and building demand for what you’ve created.
3. Sales - Turning prospective customers into paying customers.
4. Value Delivery - Giving your customers what you’ve promised and ensuring that they’re satisfied.
5. Finance - Bringing in enough money to keep going and make your effort worthwhile.

The book has an accompanying website with helpful summaries of key concepts. The ‘5 Parts of Every Business’ is covered here: Personal MBA

I like this model. Its good for looking at a business you currently work for, or for understanding businesses you work with or buy things from. I would make one small change, and separate the Value Creation stage into two parts, so that we have 6 Parts:

• Discover a Thing people need or want.
• Create that Thing
• Let the world (or at least the part of the world you think need or want the Thing) know what you have created.
• Sell the Thing to people who are interested
• If they buy the Thing, you have to deliver it.
• Make sure that in doing all of the above, you can afford to keep going.

Each of these steps can be (and are) complex in the real world. But for thinking about a business, pretend for the time being that each is a ‘Spherical Cow’ with very simple inputs and outputs. You will very quickly be able to see where a business, be it your own, one you work for or one you have to deal with, is struggling.