Tuesday, April 3rd, 2007
A Rose by Any Other Name
I didn’t start out to become a business researcher (though, in hindsight, that was the first professional role I was paid for). I started out to become a physician, and completed the four year-long courses needed to enter medical school—inorganic chemistry, organic chemistry, physics, and biology. This took much of my time, energy, and waking thoughts for two years in college. And though I later decided not to pursue medicine as a career, it was not time wasted. I often find myself using scientific thinking, or referring by analogy to some principle of science to understand a business problem.
Modern science is based on the scientific method—hypotheses are developed, then tested for validity in the real world. Eventually, some become known as theories. Others are so time-tested and reliably true that they are known as laws. The scientific method is a specialized kind of knowledge value chain.
