Aletheia was the ancient Greek word for truth. The title refers first and foremost to the kind of disclosure, or new perspective, we strive to obtain when working on a problem where conventional problem-solving approaches have proven insufficient.
Not truth as we understand it today, understood as the correspondence between an abstract concept and concrete reality, but truth as the unhidden (a-letheia.) Unhiding is not first of all performed by technicians, by scientists, or even by philosophers. It is something we all do, every moment, every day. Unhiding is the act of assigning meaning to things and to the world, meaning for a given person in a given situation. This is aletheia: truth as meaning for someone.
One such tool for disclosure is called The Five Lenses: A deep dive into five areas that are affecting and shaping the business model, or the source of income in question, for years to come. In our work we have found that forcing yourself to look at a given commercial problem from five very different viewpoints can provide the knowledge needed to illuminate a new and prosperous path forward for a company, a business line, or a troubled product category. The five viewpoints combined will help in forming a new and profound perspective with the potential to change marketplaces.
This publication is an attempt to unpack the FIVE LENSES framework. The five volumes in this series will not look like the usual business books. Instead, we have chosen to experiment with the format from volume to volume.
