Anything elegant is often simple; not everything simple is elegant. Things that are simple are often user friendly, not everything simple is user friendly. Sometimes complexity is needed. Simplicity has different meanings. Good businesses need to be simple and easy to understand, and that’s the investment criteria for Warren Buffet. Businesses are getting too complex these days and most executives, let alone CEOs, know all the moving pieces or have any idea of their risk exposure. And some rely on SAP to manage their enterprise and that’s unrealistic.

There are many different kinds of simplicity, sometimes in form and sometimes in function and sometimes both. Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. once said, “I wouldn’t give a fig for simplicity on this side of complexity, but I would give my life for simplicity on the other side of complexity.” Elegance is “far side” simplicity that is emotionally engaging, profoundly intelligent, and artfully crafted to be two things at once: simple and powerful. Why elegance? Is it an elusive target? Is it only applicable to design?

A business model includes the raw function of what we (economist) refer to as its “industry” (it’s a bank or a retail chain or a newspaper, for example), but can also include particular ways of operating the raw function (a branchless bank or low-cost airline, a discount retailer or a free online social network, for example). Thus the business model “function” can shade into “performance” when particular approaches to types of customer, levels of service and brand ethos are considered. The architectural side of the business model is how the core components are stacked together and that impacts the function as well as the performance. It can be simple and elegant AND it can be complex and elegant.

Problem solving is what business strategists, human factor specialists, designers, engineers do. It is what they are, trained for, or should be, good at. At one time the basic problem solving skills all engineers needed were developed in school. Sadly it is no longer the case. A look at system show us why many students going in to university have had very little basic training in the process of problem solving: the “problems” set tend to be largely single step tests of knowledge of individual principles.  Not many undergraduates today have the confidence and mental structure available to say “I really don’t know how to solve this problem yet, but if I’m given some time to set about it systematically and logically think about it I think I can work it out”

Let’s take an everyday common example faced by people in all types of organizations – writing business cases. Should you write a case top down or bottom up? The top down approach works as a high level guesstimate of a final value in a case  – you take some high level numbers, run a back of the envelope calculation and voila, you’ve got about 80% of the answer with about 20% of the effort. The bottom up approach advocates a different tact – meticulously including detailed numbers to build the case from scratch. The optimal approach is really determined by a number of key factors.

1. Do the methods under consideration differ materially in the end result? Identify these differences up front and eliminate any of those that likely will not provide you with desired results.
2. Are the methods proven? Proven methods are not necessarily the best, but do provide comfort and stability.
3. Are you under time constraints? Some methods require more time than others. – it obviously takes longer to construct a bottom up approach vs. a top down approach. Choose the method that gets you to the final product on time.
4. What is your team makeup? If you’re working with others that have expertise in one method vs. another, it will make your process decision easier.
5. Who is your audience? Will you have to explain or follow some pre-determined method? If so, choosing one that is structured and easily comprehensible is an important consideration.
6. Is there an industry or organizational “accepted” practice to be considered? An accepted practice is not always the best one to choose, but will often be met with less resistance.