Faulty definitions are the root cause of numerous issues that manifest themselves as significant business problems.  In other words, a lot of businesses fail to achieve what they want to achieve because they fail to properly define what they want to achieve.  Most business processes are operated by people—people who are subjective and prone to interpretation and assumption when complete information is lacking.  I have witnessed this in almost every process improvement project that I have led.  The problem, in most cases, is not that the people controlling the business processes are incapable, but that far too much information within the operational definitions of things is left to interpretation and assumption.  The multitude of disparate interpretations and assumptions developed by different people lead to a great deal of the variation within business processes that is so detrimental (read my blog dated March 22, 2012, entitled “Variation:  Process Enemy Number One”).

The following is an exercise called The White Shirt Exercise that anyone can conduct at work or in any other environment that will demonstrate the importance of precise and accurate operational definitions: 

1. Select 10 – 20 individuals at random and ask them to participate in a 5-minute exercise.
2. Seat the group of individuals in a room and ask them to each survey the room and privately write down the number of white shirts present in the room.
3. Do not answer any questions, but instead, tell your group that you can answer their questions once the exercise is completed.
4. Collect the responses and observe the results. 

I have conducted this exercise on well over one hundred occasions and, without fail, there has been a wide variety in the responses that I have received back from the group and not on one singe occasion was there ever a consensus.  

Imagine for a minute that the team assembled for this exercise was the staff of a small company that was in the business of eradicating white shirts in the workplace and somehow derived its income that way.  The company certainly would have some major problems, wouldn’t it?  Some of non-white shirts would be eliminated while some white shirts would remain and the company’s profitability would suffer as a result. 

These disconnects occur daily in all types of companies.  No industry is exempt.  It occurs when one department in a company has the responsibility to deliver critical information to another department within the company and the format for the delivery of the information is not specified.  It occurs when one associate within a company has a requirement that is due by COB (close of business) and the actual time associated with COB is unclear or ambiguous.  In some cases, these dysfunctional definitions can even be the sole reason why a company fails to deliver upon its value proposition to its external customers.   

So how do we fix this?  We can do so by incorporating more specificity within our operational definitions.  Generally, more verbose definitions are better than terse definitions in this case since the wordier a definition is, the more dimensions or modes it can address and the less likely the definition is to be misconstrued.  We can also bring the cross functional departments together to iron out differences and synchronize definitions.  When questioned about their responses, for example, the members of The White Shirt Company all had justifying rationale for the number they wrote down and each rationale provided the group with an avenue to further refine and make more specific the operational definition of a “white shirt” so that the group could ultimately achieve consensus.  Then and only then was the White Shirt Company postured for success.

There is a reason why Define is the first phase of the Six Sigma methodology and, by far, the most important.  If the Define phase is saved until later, all of the other phases will have limited significance at best because definitions that lack precision and accuracy lead to problems that no company or industry is immune to.  Simple exercises like The White Shirt Exercise can not only demonstrate this point, but also reveal ways that business leaders can quickly resolve seemingly complex problems.

Many entrepreneurs take business planning lightly and tend to start up and operate their businesses based upon gut-feel or intuition.  Others put off planning until later in their venture—when it may be far too late.

Many successful business owners (as well as quite a few unsuccessful ones) will attest to the fact that the failure to plan a business venture upfront can come with grave consequences. According to Dun & Bradstreet reports, “Businesses with fewer than 20 employees have only a 37% chance of surviving four years (of business) and only a 9% chance of surviving 10 years.” Restaurants only have a 20% chance of surviving 2 years. Of these failed businesses, only 10% of them close involuntarily due to bankruptcy and the remaining 90% close because the business was not successful, did not provide the level of income desired, or was too much work for their efforts. The failure rate for new businesses is around 70% to 80% in the first year and only about half of those that survive the first year will remain in business the next five years.

In addition to the preponderance of evidence in existence to support the relationship between business planning and business success and aside from the age-old adage that equates the failure to plan with a plan to fail, there are numerous other benefits that accrue to the savvy entrepreneurs who appreciate the activity’s significance.  While not an all-inclusive list, a few of the significant benefits are listed below:

• Helping the entrepreneur to clarify his or her vision and decide whether or not to forge ahead with the idea.
• Determining if the entrepreneur’s product and/or service has sufficient market support and whether or not the venture will be profitable.
• Providing an estimate of the entrepreneur’s start-up costs and how much the entrepreneur will need to invest, finance, or raise from other investors (as well as the required timing of those revenues).
• Convincing investors and lenders to fund the entrepreneur’s business.
• Recruiting staff for the start-up.
• Defining the entrepreneur’s target market (who his or her customers are or will be) and how to best reach them through strategic marketing actions or expanding market coverage or reach.
• Establishing or reevaluating the entrepreneur’s competitive position within the marketplace, by conducting a thorough analysis of the competition (finding out where the competitor’s weaknesses are and how the entrepreneur can take advantage of them).
• Defining corporate objectives and programs to achieve those objectives.
• Helping the entrepreneur’s business make money from the start by developing effective operational strategies.
• Assisting the entrepreneur to understand the risks involved and anticipate potential problems so that the entrepreneur can solve them before those potential problems become disasters.
• Setting a value on the business for sale, legal, or other purposes.

Though volumes of data exist supporting the limited chances of entrepreneurial success without a business plan, many entrepreneurs still take the activity lightly and many move forward with no formal plan at all.  While one of the milestones within the process of business planning is the creation of a formal written document (the business plan itself), the formal written business plan encapsulates but a small fraction of the value of the planning process and should not be viewed as the end of the planning process.  As anyone who has operated a business before will most likely attest, the planning process should transcend the creation of the formal written plan and be an ongoing activity that continues concurrently with the operation of the business even after the business matures.  Furthermore, the extreme value associated with the planning process is derived from it being a structured process by which the entrepreneur can objectively think through and record the mechanics of the proposed (or existing) venture and develop contingencies for potential pitfalls or barriers to success.  After all, that’s why many investors, lenders, potential partners, and even some astute potential employees ask to see the written plan—to see evidence that this thought process has taken place prior to making a commitment to the business.

Contrary to the beliefs of many, Price is not a quality attribute. More appropriately, Price is a reflection of how well (or poorly) the true quality attributes of the company’s offerings are perceived by the company’s market. In other words, the way to improve upon price sensitivity is to focus on and improve the perceived benefit. The market will bear a higher price for the company’s products and services only when this successfully occurs. This concept is very closely related to The Value Equation framework that I laid out in my blog dated January 31, 2012 entitled The Value Equation.

Examples that demonstrate that Price is not Quality—but instead its corollary—are all around us and one does not have to look far for substantiation. Take, for example, the fact that a well-known company can charge a higher price (and get consumers to pay it) for the exact same product or service that is provided by a lesser-known company. Doesn’t this occur because the market perceives that a higher level of quality is associated with the products and services offered by a company that has been in business longer? How about the simple fact that every time you make a purchase, you at least perform some sort of cursory cost comparison? Doesn’t this fact, alone, provide enough evidence that Price and Quality are not the same thing, but, instead, oppose one another?

This dynamic is so pervasive that it even applies within the job market. In the case of the job market, however, the hiring company is the client and the interviewing candidate is the vendor. The interviewing candidate’s price, in this scenario, is his or her asking salary. When a company is considering a new hire, that company will invariably perform some type of cost-benefit analysis to determine whether the new hire will be worth more to the company than what that individual is asking for in salary. If the company deems that the individual will not be worth more to the company than the salary they are demanding, the company will most likely opt to go with a lower-cost or higher-quality alternative. In many cases, companies resort to the lower-cost alternative of outsourcing the function to another country because domestic candidates consistently fail to provide a company-centric value proposition that represents a level of benefit (perceived by the company) sufficiently high enough to justify the higher salaries they demand.

So what’s the big deal with mis-categorizing Price as a quality attribute, anyway? It can’t do any harm…or can it? From an objective standpoint, the only way to improve Price (at least from the customer’s perspective) is to reduce it—an activity that generally runs contrary to the long-term objectives of most businesses. Notwithstanding that, however, the relationship between Price and Quality is akin to a tug-of-war with Price on the left end of the rope, Perceived Quality on the right end, and Value as the marker in the middle. In order to increase the strength of Price, in this scenario, and keep the Value marker in the same spot, one has to increase the strength of Perceived Quality by an equivalent factor. Otherwise, the Value marker will shift to the left. To the contrary, if one increases the strength of Perceived Quality without increasing the strength of Price by an equivalent amount, the Value marker will shift to the right.

In addition to highlighting the relationship between Price and Quality, the above analogy is useful to demonstrate the challenges associated with balancing pricing and quality. Consistent with the analogy, a business best practice would be to maintain the Value marker dead center since there are maladies associated with slippage in either direction. Obviously, slippage to the left would indicate a situation in which consumers simply are not purchasing the company’s products or services because the company’s pricing is defeating the perceived quality of their offerings, resulting in a sub-par value determination. What are not so obvious, however, are the negative repercussions associated with slippage to the right, wherein the perceived quality of the company’s offerings is defeating their pricing, resulting in an above-par value determination. In the “right slippage” situation, the company’s prices are below what the market will bear and, as a result, the company is leaving unclaimed revenues lying on the table by not raising prices.

Price is not Quality and we are surrounded by numerous examples that support this conclusion. This understanding can even assist us to identify and diagnose problems within the job market. If companies mis-categorize Price as Quality, those companies will overlook the fact that Price and Quality oppose one another and will certainly be incapable maintaining any sort of balance within this proverbial tug-of-war. With a lack of balance between Price and Quality, a company will be forced to endure one of two distinct fates. They will either price themselves out of the market or leave unclaimed revenues lying on the table.

Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary defines a process as “a series of actions or operations conducing to an end.”  This definition is not unlike the classical process improvement definition that identifies a process as those certain activities that are undertaken to transform raw materials or inputs into finished products or outputs.  In accordance with the definition, every business, at its highest level, is a process and our economy is simply an interconnected network of those business processes. 

If we understand that a business is indeed a process, then it becomes that much easier for us to see that every business also comes complete with all of the trappings of any other process, to include customers, outputs, inputs, and suppliers.  Even non-profit organizations, since they have requirements for suppliers to provide inputs and obligations to provide specific outputs to their customers, qualify as processes that participate in the economic process network.

It is important to identify the “process” aspect of individual businesses and our economy in order to recognize that every business and even our economy itself lends itself to process improvement strategies at many different levels.  For example, we can measure the output (or Process Y) of any business to determine how well (or poorly) that business is currently performing in light of its customers’ expectations.  Of course, we will need to define the customer expectations and perceived critical-to-quality attributes (CTQs) prior to conducting such a measurement.  We can then analyze the elements and sub-processes within and relating to the business to identify when, where, how, and why variation occurs within the operation of the business and the key elements that are responsible for defects (departures from customer perceived quality or expectations in certain instances of the business output).  Once we have identified the key performance drivers for the business, we can now implement business improvements that will limit the variation in the business process and allow the business to achieve repeatable results that consistently fulfill the business’s value proposition and meet or exceed customer expectations.  Finally, we can develop and implement a process control plan or standing operating procedure for our business that insures that the processes within the business remain “fixed”.

The potential sources of pain within any business can be nearly infinite and can include environmental factors, human factors, environmental factors, technology factors, material factors, supplier factors, or method factors, just to name a few.  The major variation contributors, however, can often be isolated to a small handful of significant causes (Process X’s).  These significant causes are most easily and accurately determined through a thorough understanding of the business operations, data collection, variation and capability analysis, and statistical hypothesis testing.  Far too many business owners and CEOs attempt to resolve their business problems using a gut-feel firefighting approach that relies on only minimal data and, in many cases, only causes additional problems or causes their existing problems to worsen. Even if these types of “solutions” do cause the business pain to subside momentarily, they are only temporary fixes that treat symptoms (as opposed to the underlying disease) since root cause and the major variation contributors are left undetermined and unaddressed.

Every business is a process that relies on suppliers to provide inputs in order for the business to provide an acceptable output to its customers.  The identification of the business as a process and the application of a rigorous and systematic process improvement approach can yield a permanent fix to business problems.  This approach is far more effective than a gut-feel firefighting approach that falls short of addressing root cause.

While this may appear to be academic, numerous business owners continue to underestimate the perils of allowing large amounts of process variation to exist.  Would you believe me if I told you that reducing variation in a particular business processes is even more important than achieving the goal of that process?  You tell me, then.  Would you ever board a commercial aircraft that was flown by a pilot who has landed safely, but didn’t know how he landed safely and couldn’t assure you that he could do it again?  Or drive knowing that your automobile had a steering malfunction even though your car had never left the road?

Let’s explore exactly why variation within business processes is so bad.  Let’s take, for example, two vastly different basketball players.  We will label the first player Business Process A and the second player Business Process B.  Business Process A is very unpredictable in his shooting.  He often takes wild shots and can sometimes miss the rim entirely.  He does, however, manage to get the basketball in the hoop 75% of the time.  Business Process B, on the other hand, is very consistent.  He always take the same shot from the same spot on the floor, uses the same technique, and his shots are almost always  about a foot short and to the left, resulting in a meager 10% shooting average.  Which one of these two business processes has the most potential for improvement?

While one might think that Business Process A who already has a 75% shooting average would have the greatest potential, we have no idea what steps to take to improve his shooting percentage since there is a great deal of variation in his shooting style.  To improve Business Process B, on the other hand, all we have to do is move him one foot to the right and closer to the rim and he should be able to achieve very close to a 100% shooting percentage. Business Process B, therefore, would have the greatest potential for improvement.

The point of the above analogy is to demonstrate that until we are able to eradicate the variation within our business processes, we really do not have any control.  Without control, the success or failure of a business process can only be determined by chance and all we can do is hope for the best.  Once we are able to gain control of the process by eliminating process variation, we can now take proactive positive steps to improve it so that the process yields consistently successful results.

Capitalism 2.0 is derived from recent statements made by Bill Gates, suggesting that companies should sacrifice profits for the public good.  While Henry Ford had suggested a similar concept as early as 1916, his shareholders overruled him.  The more popular and widely accepted view of Capitalism is that of Milton Friedman which suggests that the sole responsibility of business is to increase profits. Here is the link to a very good Forbes article that discusses the topic:  http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2008/0310/030.html.

Social responsibility is a very good topic of discussion—particularly in the context of The Entrepreneurial Revolution.  After all, isn’t the reduction of unemployment a socially responsible objective?  And anyone reading this post certainly is not profiting directly for spending his or her time reading it—nor am I for writing it.  Moreover, I will go out on a limb to suggest that the majority of people (if not everyone) reading this post and those who have joined The Entrepreneurial Revolution have done so because they recognize the indelible connection between social responsibility and value. 

Please note that I was very careful in the selection of my words for the previous sentence and carefully avoided any reference to a connection between social responsibility and profitability, but instead referenced value.  Why did I do this?  I did this because profitability is measured in dollars and is, at best, a very weak measure of true value.  If you are unclear as to my meaning here, please refer back to my February 5, 2012 blog entitled, “Five Chickens or a Five Chicken Note” (http://ameliorationincorporated.com/five-chickens-or-a-five-chicken-note/).  Value, on the other hand, is what it is.  

Perhaps, this is the very same reason why two great and very shrewd businessmen (Ford and Gates) both issued PUBLIC statements relegating profitability to a standard lower than social responsibility that are the basis of Capitalism 2.0.  Could it be that these two men possessed the extremely rare capability to see what other businessmen and businesswomen could not?  Is it possible that while others were grappling over adding dollars to their corporate bottom lines, these two were issuing philanthropic statements to a public that couldn’t care less about whether a company succeeds or fails and that has its own needs and wants at heart?  If that same public is your market, why wouldn’t that public prefer to do business with a company that is led by someone who sincerely cares about them?  Could Ford and Gates actually have known this in advance?  It kind of seems like a no-brainer to me. How much value did these two great men create for their companies by making their sentiments known?  

On the other hand, however, had Ford and Gates kept their opinions to themselves, society would have never known about their deep-seated consideration for social responsibility and their opinions would have brought no additional value to their companies.  Since the impetus of social responsibility campaigns is promulgation, they would have been Cinderellas who never made it to the ball.  Moreover, had they acted upon this sentiment in clandestine fashion (i.e. contributing to socially responsible causes without letting the public know), they more than likely would have done far more harm to their companies than good since their philanthropy would simply become a cost with no good will return.  Once we are able to unshackle ourselves from the constraints of measuring and analyzing in dollars and are free to measure and analyze in value, numerous solutions avail themselves to us that we could not see before.

CreatejobsforUSA.org is a fund operated by an organization called Opportunity Finance Network (OFN) which is sponsored by Starbucks.  As I understand it, individuals who visit Starbucks donate money to create this Createjobsforusa Fund in exchange for a wristband. There is a display in every Starbucks and supposedly The Starbucks Foundation donated the first $5MM in seed capital for this fund. The OFN is supposedly a network of banks AKA Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs) that allegedly invest in opportunities to benefit low-income, low-wealth and other disadvantaged communities across the U.S.to spark job growth. Any community bank that meets OFN’s eligibility criteria can apply for and gain membership in this network and the eligibility criteria is prominently displayed along with the membership benefits on the OFN website: http://www.opportunityfinance.net/membership/default.aspx

Here’s the kicker: I’ve been all through the OFN website (and even watched their cheesy little video and not only can I not find any information to support their claim that 100% of the donated funds go towards the creation of jobs, but I can’t see where $1 of the donated funds goes towards the creation of jobs. The OFN doesn’t even use the funds to insure the loans that are originated by the member banks like FHA does or guarantee the loans like VA does (or maybe they just left that part out of the member benefits section).

Here’s how the whole operation works as I see it:

1. People visit Starbucks (literally tens of millions of people worldwide daily) to buy their favorite cup of joe.
2. The visitors see this nifty way to help out the unemployment situation so they make a donation and get a cloth-covered rubber band to wear on their wrist and placate their conscience (it’s for a good cause, right?).
3. The funds then go to OFN (the total amount has to be millions daily because they ask for a minimum donation of $5 and I am sure some give more).

As far as I can tell, the donated dollars stop at OFN because even if a community bank applies and gains membership in the “Premiere Network of CDFIs” the bank still lends out its own funds, charges and collects interest, and is responsible for servicing and making sure that the loans are repaid.

I originally dug into this because I was going to throw the flag on the banks if OFN gave the banks the donated funds to make loans with since this would mean that the banks would be earning interest on and getting paid back dollars that were simply given to them. Much to my surprise, however, it appears to be far more egregious than that—OFN apparently just keeps the donated money and offers the member banks some nominal benefits that, in my opinion, are of questionable value such as a discount for attending the annual OFN Conference (supposedly a $200 value), a member profile (supposedly a $2,000 value), and an annual customized peer analysis of their CDFI performance (supposedly a $225 value).  I would love to find out how they derive the values for these benefits, by the way.

So am I missing something here?  Somebody please take a look at this and tell me that we are not all victims of an elaborate scam perpetrated right under our noses and under the auspices of our desire to help out on the unemployment front.

If we define a commodity as anything that possesses a market value, a job is a byproduct of commerce–not a commodity that is produced from raw materials or through the efforts of an individual. As a matter of fact, a job perhaps would be best termed the anti-commodity since it is the mechanism by which all goods and services are produced.  

Jobs, with respect to commodities, are very much akin to anti-matter, with respect to matter.  In the world of quantum physics, anti-matter can be produced from energy, but only if an equivalent matter counter part is produced as well.  In much the same sense, one cannot produce jobs without producing an equivalent amount of marketable commodities. Our contemporary perspective tends to overlook the latter part of the above statement for the sake of the first.

In order for me to make my point here, we have to really delve deeper into the mechanics of our economy to underscore what a job really is. Since Capitalism and profit motive comprise the basic foundation of our economy, entrepreneurs and existing business owners identify (or in some cases create) a general need or a want within the economy that they feel they can profit from.  In order to fulfill this need and still make a profit (that’s their motive, remember?), they need to hire labor.  In order to do this, they create a job description that describes the capacity in which a prospective employee will work.  Finally, the entrepreneur or the business will establish a pay rate for the newly created position that will allow the entrepreneur or the business to realize a return on the salary or wages that they pay the employee.

Based upon the logic above, a job is clearly the anti-commodity, yet most people view a job just like the commodities in the marketplace—as if it were an object that they can possess and as if it has a market value tied to it.  Some people even talk about importing and exporting jobs.  Even still, many people often exacerbate this faulty thinking by not only assuming that a job is a marketable item that they can possess, but by also assuming that it is their human right to possess one (I have actually had employees, whom I terminated for cause, sue me in court for taking their job away!).  This line of reasoning, in turn, has led us to the erroneous conclusion that everyone should have a job and has caused us to embark upon a magical mystery tour of nonsense “job creation” activity. Can you see where this entire train of thought was derailed before it left the station?

It’s time to put the train back on the tracks.  A job is not a marketable item that can be possessed; it is a capacity—a capacity in which nearly all marketable items are created. You can’t hold one in your hand and you can’t sell one because once it is offered for sale, it becomes, by definition, a commodity.  Jobs are the anti-commodity and if we begin our line of reasoning with this “train on the tracks” perspective, we may actually arrive at our intended destination.

It would be beneficial for jobseekers to view the employment relationship in this manner, but unfortunately many do not.  The understanding that the job seeker represents a one-person company offering a service that is in search of a long-term purchase contract (employment agreement) with a single customer (his or her future employer) would most certainly assist in landing the source of income that they seek.  In other words, the job-seeker is marketing and attempting to sell his or her capabilities as services that a potential employer might need.  The jobseeker is the vendor and employer is the customer—clearly.

If you agree with the above analogy, then you can probably appreciate the significance of its implications.  Shouldn’t anyone or any organization that is offering a product or service for sale at least think through all of the elements of a business plan?  Shouldn’t a jobseeker be able to understand his or her strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats?  Shouldn’t he or she be able to fully describe the services that they offer and be able to identify their target market, buying patterns, and major sources of competition? Shouldn’t he or she also be able to describe his or her value proposition to a potential employer and his or her competitive advantage?  How about a marketing strategy that considers positioning and pricing, promotion, and distribution strategies?  Finally, shouldn’t a jobseeker’s resume actually be constructed more like a marketing flyer that flows from a comprehensive marketing plan than a stuffy 1-2 page boring document that simply lists all of the things that he or she has done in the past?

If you really think about it, we are all far more alike than we are different. In that regard, we will all buy when we can get what we need or what we want at a cost that is not prohibitive—and employers are no different when it comes to hiring.  If you want to challenge that, by the way, go apply for a job that matches your abilities and tell them that they don’t have to pay you—I guarantee you’ll land it (unless, of course, that employer does not value what you have to offer above and beyond the cost of bringing you on board).  Therefore, jobseekers should put a great deal of time into articulating a solid value proposition to potential employers that will convince the potential employer that the services the jobseeker has to offer are far more valuable to the potential employer than the employer’s cost to employ the jobseeker.  Then, and only then, will income-earning opportunities for the jobseeker abound.  After all, we are all entrepreneurs—whether we know it or not.  If we know it, however, we can adopt the practices that will allow us to be successful in our pursuits.

The Employment Model (http://ameliorationincorporated.com/about-us/) deliberately omits capital or dollars because money is a very misleading element in the overall scheme of things.  Additionally, when capital or dollars have been historically used as an objective, the result has been an ill-founded conclusions in many cases.  The currency that is used to evaluate the relationships within the model is value, defined as perceived quality (what we want) divided by perceived cost (what we have to do to get it).  After all, isn’t that what we are all really seeking anyway?  

This point was emphasized to me a few weeks ago when I happened across a news story about a man who was trapped by an avalanche.  After a few days, the man was eventually found alive and rescued.  When asked how he was able to keep from freezing to death, he told the rescuers that he was able to start a fire for warmth and keep it going by burning the dollar bills that he was carrying.  I would suggest that in this extreme scenario, the man had value as his objective–not dollars.

More specific to our model, however, we must be careful not to jump to conclusions before we even get started.  In my opinion, suggesting that capital is “needed” to start a business, grow a business, or hire employees is just that–jumping to conclusions. Certainly, many people (and probably a good number reading this article) have been able to accomplish each of these without any additional capital.  Well, that fact alone certainly voids out capital as a necessity within the model and (to be a bit radical for a second) may even call into question its utility in diagnosing the problem of unemployment altogether.  Furthermore, I would argue that the insertion of “capital” or “money” as a necessity within the model would, at the very least, rule out all of the means by which individuals have accomplished the aforementioned as a set of possible solutions.  After all, do we really need or want money or the things that money can buy or provide for us?

Commerce, at its origin, was not about money as an objective anyway; it has always been about value.  One person had a pig and another person had a chicken.  The person with the pig wanted poultry and the person with the chicken wanted pork–two compatible values and value propositions.  These two individuals would barter with one another and each would obtain what they wanted in exchange for what they could provide–directly. 

Somewhere along the line, however, the pig trader realized that he was only able to eat for a day or two on the chicken while the chicken trader was able to eat for weeks on the pig.  The pig, therefore, provided more value to its recipient than the chicken did to its receipient so the pig trader began to demand ten chickens for one pig and the chicken trader complied.

One day, these two individuals showed up for their usual exchange and the chicken trader only brought five chickens.  Rather than trading only half the pig, the two concluded the exchange, but developed a means of keeping track of the difference in value inherent in an exchange of five chickens for one whole pig, thereby bringing about the birth of modern currency in the form of the Five-Chicken Note.

While my parable above may come across as somewhat contrived (or even a little bit cheesy), my intent is to underscore a point that I think will help to guide our work in The Entrepreneurial Revolution and enable us to arrive at practical conclusions that lead to real and workable solutions:  nobody needs or wants the Five-Chicken Note; what they really need or want is the five chickens.