Forgetting and mixing models

No.

I advice students to FIRST approach a question using common sense otherwise many become fixated by models and produce answers that are too theoretical. However, the title of this paper is not “The Common Sense Approach to Business Development” and the common sense ideas of “Chrisi04” might not be enough. Models should be seen as helps, not hindrances. Someone else has thought about these problems and developed frameworks, which although not perfect, have withstood considerable scrutiny which help to organise data, analyse it and to reach tentative conclusions.

So after initially using your common sense, it is important, where possible, to try to justify your analysis and perhaps extend it using appropriate models.

If you think models are unimportant I draw your attention to SBL Exam SD 2019 Q3 and Exhibit 6. Right at the bottom of that exhibit is a strong hint that they would like you to use the Baldrige model of performance excellence. If you don’t use that, I’m not sure how easy it would be to score well.