9        PERCEPTION SPHERES

9.1        The concept of Perception Spheres

The concept of the four Perception Spheres emerged during the development of the theory of Business Orientations. This theory holds that there are only four fundamental forms of business—namely, four ways of creating or meeting customer needs: 1) Expert, 2) Product, 3) Self-Service and 4) Commodity.

Each Business Orientation relates to a perception sphere through which that orientation can be viewed:

The Expert operates in the sphere of concreteness, engaging with concrete clients and providing concrete solutions.
The Product Orientation focuses on making its products generally available to the general public.
Self-Service offers users autonomy in both choice and action.
The Commodity constitutes an essential condition of life, representing the essential sphere.

Each perception sphere is best characterized by its main manifestation:

The Expert Orientation is driven by a personal relation between the Expert and his concrete Client. This relationship is built on trust and cooperation.

A product is an object of value. In addition to its practical value—its usefulness—a product also carries an appreciation value, providing satisfaction through beauty, symbolic social status, or other desirable qualities.

The Self-Service Orientation is founded on the Self-Service principle, which embodies choice and accessibility. Self-Services eliminate barriers to these principles, such as time constraints, spatial limitations, high costs, poor navigation, and inefficient flow. In Stock and Commodity Exchanges, Self-Services facilitate another key autonomous principle: the principle of supply and demand.

The existence of natural organic and inorganic commodities is essential for both life and business.

The difference among the perception spheres can perhaps best be illustrated by applying the criterion of diversity. There are countless distinct concrete beings and objects in the world, which can be classified into a smaller number of general categories. However, from the standpoint of the autonomous principle of their very existence, there is no difference among them. All parts of the world constitute a single existential whole—one that cannot be observed from the outside, since it is impossible to stand apart from it.

The degree of diversity is linked to the degree of comparison. In the realm of concreteness, the number of possible comparisons is at its maximum. In the autonomous realm, everything is ‘the same.’ Finally, in the fundamental realm, there is no one to compare anything:

The fourth essential sphere is not strictly a perception sphere as it lacks a perceiver. It represents Inaccessible Knowledge – ultimate Reality itself.
Any so-called perceiver or observer of the ultimate Reality would be just imaginary and therefore unreal. And he would not know he is unreal. This means, for example, that in the perceiving mode, we cannot know whether anything is really happening in Reality or not.

In its simplest expression the whole theory can be visualized as follows:

The optics of perception spheres can be used to view life phenomena from more fundamental and holistic standpoints.

Examples of how this perspective can be applied are provided in the following chapters.

Note:
For more insights into the significance and the above characteristics of the Perception Spheres theory see the blog posts:
“Relation between concepts of Business Orientations and Perception Spheres: chat with AI”
Perception Spheres: Understanding “Degrees of Differentiation”