Where The Classics Meet Business
By President Matthew Smith
Some of our favorite moments at Hildegard come from organic connections that emerge between our study of the classics and student work in business and entrepreneurship.
An example from last week featured Aristotle nudging his way into our discussion of Value Proposition design.
In a value proposition, we express the value that our work is providing to customers and benefactors. But value is so much more than a transactional exchange. It's a story about our limitations and needs as individuals and how we can serve others through ingenuity and smart strategic thinking. As Hildegardians build ventures in physical healthcare, regenerative agriculture, and the arts, they're asked to tell the story of their products and programs by looking deep into the source of the problem that they're solving.
In other words, students must ask WHY in more ways than one. Why do people need this product? What do they need it for? Through what means will they access it? A value prop has "Pain Relievers" and "Gain Creators." And it materializes in a "Product or Service."
Enter Aristotle. In our discussions of Aristotle's Physics in the Foundations of Thought curriculum, we've been investigating the difference between KNOWLEDGE and UNDERSTANDING. The difference, for Aristotle, is that understanding understands WHY a thing is what it is in several ways — in four ways, in fact. Those who know their Aristotle will recognize the four causes — the efficient, material, formal, and final causes of a thing.
What can this ancient Greek definition of natural causes possibly have to do with value prop design? The answer: quite literally everything!
A good product relieves pain for customers. That's Aristotle's efficient cause, the thing that drives someone to purchase it. It also needs to create an opportunity for gain — that's the material cause, the practical improvement the product promises to offer. And the formal cause? ... we design the form that good will take as a product, program, or service. And for those fellow philosophy nerds out there wondering about the final cause, the purpose, we connect value prop design to a higher end, to the goods for which a product exists — our happiness, health, quality of life, spiritual edification.
At the core, what Hildegard students learn is the art of understanding, beginning with the nature of understanding itself. And how we understand things in business is fueled by how we know nature, God, our society, and ourselves.
That's the Hildegard experience.
