Sitefocus - Using Automated Algorithmic Business Thinking (ABT) to meet business challenges

Algorithmic Business Thinking (ABT) is a concept developed by MIT Slone for business leaders to accelerate digital transformation and optimize ROI on AI and technology investment. ABT offers advantages for business managers to solve complex business problems. The four cornerstones of ABT are: decomposition, pattern matching, abstraction, algorithms (digital and human).

Automate ABT Process with ELAINE

SiteFocus's ELAINE, a SAAS platform, automates the ABT process, thus freeing business managers from the mental intensive process of decomposition, pattern matching, and abstraction.

To use ELAINE for ABT, we start with a formal problem definition such as a narrative; a document that narrates the context of a problem at hand. For the purpose of discussion, we selected an article from The Atlantic on the subject of “The Plan to Stop Every Respiratory Virus at Once".

This article is relevant to commercial REIT that is looking for strategy to protect its property value in the midst of this pandemic. If a rental space for eatery is equipped with vertical air path ventilation system, occupants will not breath in air exhausted from others. Customers can enjoy their meals, and safe from fear of COVID infection or spread. When the same applies to an office environment, it is translated into life back to pre-pandemic where worker are safely working indoor without having to wear a face-mask.

How to apply ABT’s cornerstones “decomposition and abstraction” to gain a better understanding of the problem at hand?

Input the article to ELAINE for analysis, within seconds, ELAINE provides an output with an instant abstraction of the problem.

ELAINE analyzed and abstracted context from the article. A knowledge diagram (Figure 1) and a table of abstractions comprised of key elements (Figure 2) are created that inspire critical thinking and design thinking towards a viable solution.

The nodes in the knowledge diagram correspond to the list of abstraction in the table depicted in Figure 2.
In Figure 2, each table entry is an abstraction presented as a tuple enclosed by parenthesis. The entries in the high level abstractions (HLA) table is ranked by relevancy. These tuples are hyperlinked to the corresponding context from the article.

The top entry is “(ventilation,indoor)”. Hovering over each of the leaf nodes of “INDOOR”, it reveals the following popup windows showing context that concern this abstraction.

With these nexus at hand, a business leader is ready to think about solutions to mitigate the risk of airborne virus that infects human’s respiratory system. One of the solutions is the application of Vertical Air Path.

Using knowledge from designing airflow systems for data centers, it is a matter of creating environments with definitive airflow paths. For air to travel from floor to ceiling, it requires floors with built in air outlets evenly distributed throughout the floor and air return evenly distributed throughout the ceiling in a distributed air pressure environment. In this case, air will travel from floor to ceiling directly. If air is to travel from ceiling to floor, having air outlets from ceiling, and air returns on the floor will solve the problem.

If future offices and residence can adopt this model in new buildings or retrofitted spaces, breathing exhausted air from others is avoided, thus stop the spread of respiratory diseases.

ELAINE takes collaborative briefings from communications similar to the above example and turns it into an interactive navigable narrative map, offering comprehensive rationales that are inclusive of all concerns.

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View more ELAINE Narrative Cognition examples across different domains