Business Architecture and Influences From the Financial Market

As a consultant it is sometimes enough to just listen.

"I explained the accountant why this difference occurs." An entrepreneur is explaining the mismatch in the books for which the accountant was reluctant to sign off the final statement. "... but he didn't understand me... "this guy knows everything about margins and other ratios but he is not open to understand how my business really works."

It took me some time to understand this specific business, and I found it was really complex. So as a consultant the first thing to do is to simplify things. And after understanding the essentials of the business model, the question is does it need a change?

In his first book, "Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture," ... Venturi posed the question, "Is not Main Street almost all right?" He was arguing for what he called "the messy vitality" of the built environment. As he puts it, "We were calling for an architecture that promotes richness and ambiguity over unity and clarity, contradiction and redundancy over harmony and simplicity." He was challenging Modernism with the multiple solutions available from history... *

Business architecture is (amongst other things) about understanding the functional, the constructive and beauty of business, companies and organizations.

Today the stock market is in another bull-phase and one of the drivers in this phase is the speculation of take-overs and split-ups of companies. A new possible prey is a dutch anglo company called Unilever. The market "expects" a split of the two main divisions: "Foods and Home" and "Personal Care."

The investment market is ruled by very simple rules. Two companies in one have a lower stock value than two separated... So 1+1 = ?

... in his writings we find the famous response, "Less is a bore," to modernist Mies van der Rohe's dictum, "Less is more." This was Venturi's way "to make the point that modern architecture had become too simplistic. *

Architecture follows periods and styles. In discussions about Business (architecture) you will find the same periods and styles, but if there is no real movement than the market is searching for hidden money, for example to break up a company and to monetize the extra wealth. The result is a less complex business. Less complex and more boring.