3 + 2 = 4

No one is so brave that he is not disturbed by something unexpected Julius Caesar It’s disturbing to think that 3+2 won’t equal 5. Or that markets are unlike space and begin with four dimensions. Or that we might discover images that disagree with paradigms held for over 100 years. But what happens if we use Hypernomics to take a new look at an old problem? Let’s see. Suppose we want to see how customers value products. Specifically, let’s consider the three aircraft models in Figure A. We’ll want to examine features that might be important to customers, here, Max MPH and Seats. Those features mandate a pair of horizontal axes; their combined effects drive a third vertical axis, that for Price, making three ordered triples. At the same time, we may want to plot each model’s quantity sold as a horizontal dimension and couple it with its associated Price on the vertical dimension for three ordered pairs, as we see in Figure B. But the three dimensions of Value Space are not straight additions to the two dimensions of the Demand Plane. Instead, as C reveals, 3D Value Spaces and 2D Demand Planes share the Price Axis, forming 4D structures, thus 3+2=4. Four dimensions offer more insight. Time adds a fifth dimension. #innovation #hypernomics #economics #markets