From Cross-Disciplinary Experience to Business Logic Design
Since 2004, I have worked through several stages: computer programming, internet promotion, marketing planning, business planning, and capital planning. Each stage lasted roughly three years. These changes were not driven by restlessness or a lack of commitment. They came from a persistent question: can business operations be understood and practiced at a higher level? How is enterprise value formed, and how are different kinds of work connected?
During my years as a programmer, I gradually discovered that even the best software product needs to be seen, understood, and promoted. In promotion, I learned that communication cannot be separated from marketing: it must be grounded in an understanding of customers, markets, and value. In marketing planning, I came to see that without a clear business plan, marketing lacks something meaningful to communicate and realize. Later, in business planning, I saw that a company also needs to organize resources, arrange financing, and bear corresponding risks if it is to continue growing.
Looking back, I became increasingly aware that what I was pursuing was not simply a change of position or industry. It was a deeper understanding of the levels of business operation and of the logic that connects them. These forms of work appear different on the surface, but they depend on one another: software needs promotion, promotion needs marketing, marketing needs business logic, and business development needs capital support and long-term organizational capability.
I believe that business logic itself contains value and meaning. Through logical thinking, we can identify the sources of value and the key relationships within an enterprise, and draw from them the resources and motivation to act. More importantly, these insights must be brought into business practice so that an operating order consistent with the laws of business development can gradually be built.
For this reason, whether we are studying business logic itself or building an operating order, I encourage entrepreneurs to practice “descending into learning and rising into understanding”: begin with concrete problems and daily practice, gradually understand the principles behind them, and then bring that understanding back into practice to make business value more stable and more fully realized.
After the first thirteen years of practice and accumulation, I began to combine internet thinking with the consensus-oriented thinking associated with blockchain. I started using business logic diagrams and comprehensive business logic mind maps to present a more complete structure of business logic to entrepreneurs.
I. Map the Complexity: Present the Whole Business Clearly
On the surface, every enterprise appears to have a different business logic. At a deeper level, however, different forms of business logic often contain a recurring set of design dimensions.
In the section “Business Logic Design Tools and Mind Maps,” I seek to identify the common dimensions behind the real problems encountered in enterprise operations. These dimensions can then be organized and presented through mind maps and business logic diagrams.
At first, this process is inevitably complicated, and the resulting mind map may be very large. Only by recording the problems, roles, resources, objectives, processes, relationships, and outcomes as fully as possible can we begin to see the overall business structure.
“Complexity” does not mean creating complexity for its own sake. It means resisting the urge to simplify too early. We first make visible the material scattered across experience, departments, processes, and judgments, and then classify, compare, and examine it. As the work progresses, the business logic can be divided into clearer areas, and the boundaries between key questions can become visible.
This is what it means to map the complexity: see the whole picture before deciding what truly matters.
II. Simplify the Complexity: Distill Structure from Accumulated Information
When approaching a new field of knowledge, it is easy to become like the people in the parable of the blind men and the elephant: we mistake whatever part we have touched for the whole. To understand a subject properly, we need to invest time and patience, reading both primary sources such as books and papers and secondary materials such as online resources, and gradually build an overall view.
This process is necessarily demanding. We need to filter repeated information, distinguish facts from opinions, assess the reliability of sources, and separate valuable material from unsupported claims. As information accumulates, the underlying structure begins to emerge.
Mind maps can help us build a system of knowledge. Repeatedly adjusting a mind map is, in practice, a way of repeatedly searching for structure.
The core of simplification is not merely deleting information. It is identifying the relationships beneath the information. We may divide a problem according to different dimensions, and we may change dimensions when an analysis reaches a dead end. Whatever the approach, the focus should remain on the factors that genuinely influence the final outcome.
For example, take “a rocket successfully reaching the sky” as the final outcome. We can ask what conditions must be satisfied at the same time. The launch structure must keep the rocket stable and upright; the engines must provide sufficient thrust; the navigation system must correct its direction; and the structure and materials must withstand the heat and pressure of flight. Once these key points are separated and related items are grouped together, the overall logic of a launch begins to become clear.
Business problems can be approached in the same way. Starting from the desired result, we ask what conditions, steps, and relationships are necessary to achieve it. We then merge repeated elements, separate different kinds of elements, and gradually clarify the major categories.
This is what it means to simplify the complexity: distill a structure that can explain the result from a large body of information.
III. Make It Easy: Turn Structure into a Clear Method
“Easy” does not mean oversimplifying a problem. It means making a complex structure easier to understand, discuss, and apply.
As our learning deepens, we develop our own judgments and interpretations, and the key points become more accurate. This requires repeated refinement: refine the questions, refine the relationships, refine the judgments, and then refine the expression.
In the end, the key points along the structure should be concise and clear, and the relationships between them should be explicit. Even then, the work is not finished. We must continue to test the logic: if we follow this structure, are there any breaks in the reasoning? Have important conditions been omitted? Can the different stages explain one another? Does the structure form a complete loop?
When these questions can be answered, a previously unwieldy mind map begins to become a clear, understandable, and reusable method.
Making a subject easy is therefore a process of continuous verification. It requires us to remove what is unimportant without losing the conditions that determine the result. True simplicity does not mean that less content is always better. It means that every retained point has a clear purpose.
IV. Turn It into a Diagram: Make Business Logic Visible
The final step is to turn the clear structure into a diagram. This step may look simple, but it is difficult in practice.
It is simple because the key points and their relationships have already been identified, refined, and tested. It is difficult because all of them now need to be placed into a single visual structure so that the logic can be seen quickly, understood accurately, and checked repeatedly.
A good business logic diagram should meet at least three conditions:
- Logical rigor: the relationships between key points should not depend on guesswork; direction, sequence, and causality should be as clear as possible.
- Structural clarity: levels, categories, boundaries, and priorities should be easy to identify.
- Appropriate expression: the diagram should be complete and orderly, with enough visual quality to support understanding rather than obscure the logic.
This work requires repeated attempts. The position of a shape, the direction of a connection, the number of levels, and the length of the text can all affect comprehension. No layout technique can replace a deep understanding of the system itself, and no diagram can emerge naturally without sustained thinking.
The purpose is not to force every sentence into one image. A diagram is a compressed expression of logic: readers should be able to follow its paths, find the key nodes, see the relationships, and use the structure to ask further questions or begin practical work.
This is what it means to turn the easy into a diagram: convert an understood logic into a structure that can be seen, discussed, and used.
Conclusion: From Complex Experience to Usable Order
“Mapping the complexity, simplifying the complexity, making it easy, and turning it into a diagram” is not merely a drawing procedure. It is a path from experience to method and from method to practice.
First, we present a complex problem in sufficient detail. Then we distill its structure, test whether that structure is complete, and finally turn the verified logic into a clear diagram. The resulting diagram is not just an arrangement of information. It is a judgment about business logic, a compression of that logic, and a visual expression of it.
The value of business logic design lies in connecting scattered experience, revealing hidden relationships, and turning difficult questions into objects that people can understand, examine, and improve together.
When entrepreneurs continue this process of mapping, refining, verifying, and expressing, business logic is no longer only an individual collection of experiences. It can become an operating order that an enterprise can use collectively and improve over time.