The Founder of iTrust, Leslie Hayman, would say that her innovations in financial analysis originated in her study of fundamental questions raised in 2000. Her father, an aeronautical engineer and top executive, asked for her thoughts on a novel form of income equity product that appeared to confer ownership rights much as people presumed they get in common equities but do not.
Like learning was a daily hobby, she set out in what turned out to be years of research in addition to her consulting practice. Leslie's exploration and analyses gave her the opportunity to look at and learn beyond business conventions. Systematic studies led to her programming a website as a research tool, useful for her, investors and business owners. That was the basis for developing an innovative enterprise, and owners' evaluation system and publishing a range of subscriber-based financial products and services for launch of the early group of iTrust initiatives. It provided decision-makers a distinct means to identify quality resources and see end-to-end value in operations and related financial products (see Winning Team Work ).
Using Grounded Theory research techniques and an integrated approach to indexation, Leslie scoped out and compared financial and business valuation methodologies in theory, practice and functional context. Her work revealed core standards and common fallacies that shaped conventional operations, working principles around which real-world and absolute metrics could be used -- or decidedly ignored by professionals -- to deliver returns on time and money. Factors that appeared key:
Ownership as defined by rights to returns and risk exposure
Financial products and services are comprised of data and information with qualities that identify and mediate value like currency or money: These are all manmade systems (technology) or media [1].Â
Real-world Benefits are found in real-world situations and conditions measured in fundamental (absolute) terms, in addition to traditional conventions, rules, and theoretical models of engagement, collaboration, competition, and exchange.
Perception is Reality, especially when highly structured, and controlled situations or emergencies call for timely problem-solving, and safety requires the use of standardized practices (procedures) or habitual processes (like fear-based reactions, Pavlovian behaviors, and conditioned groupthink)
Bottom Line numbers that only partially represent real-world qualities and values and that may be more fully represented in other timeframes, across dimensions, dynamics, and scales of complexity that can often be seen as factors underly assumptions, behaviors, and override human intentions
Common fallacies in socio-economics, financial markets, product sales, and systems development include the Historical Fallacy [2], the Historian's Fallacy  [3], futuristic modeling based on history alone, and the problems of Presentism  [4], the Technological Fallacy that asserts systems are separate from their creators [5],, and the Technological form of an Appeal to Novelty [6] that asserts there's a constant need to speculate on new technology because it is always better than the old.
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In summary overview, decision-makers face a struggle between protecting what they know, and what truly exists that functions well for others, and what might be fulsome solutions to the challenges at hand. Leslie found:
Scope of expertise: There is an ongoing practical problem for professionals, market leaders, and regulators when they are given authority to defend orthodoxy and professional traditions (needed for premium-priced employment) because it requires collaboration with others to uphold responsibility on matters beyond the scope of the person's certified silo of expertise and experience.
Complex and dynamic change calls for thoughtful and conscientious leadership that thrives on an ability to learn from heterodoxy and fresh perspectives in an inclusive and meaningful context where it is possible to report data and analyze it as related to theories that fail to align with reality.
Professional challenges become public problems where economies and markets lose coherent definitions and so value. Because experts rely on their differential income and power under self-regulatory regimes to control (rig?) results without considering others' perspectives, or the full scope of resources available: They fall back on paid propaganda to promote an Inappropriate Appeal to Authority [7], sometimes with an Appeal to Tradition [8-9] or a sociopathic form of the Appeal to Novelty [6], to sustain their work as is, and fuel near-term rewards ahead of those granting them the privilege of authority matched with some duty of care. Â
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Of course, markets and economies function on state and international laws, policies, and practical standards. Unquestioning professional compliance through change was often celebrated in terms of heroes, ignored or vilified.
All told, procedures based on theory, that function without real-world data, may be better held as a discount factor for learning, useful innovation, and sustainable growth.
Coming from the world before the declaration of policies named COVID-19, we could see that leaders in many sectors worked under popular norms, for their communities and owners. Public figures in democracy didn't dare act like dictators to force mass compliance on civil society so much as they funded scientific research across sectors to learn from those who knew more. They fought for freedom of information, accessible media with truly open content, and academic platforms for public debate and dialogue.
Until 9-11, those in charge of regulating global trade, market makers, and participants seemed to welcome differences of opinion and embraced innovation in capital formation and evidence-based criticism. Many were willing volunteers who volunteered to support the War on Terrorism.
Now? Global financial markets and international trade may be deeper into the War Economy than most might have imagined five, or even just two, years ago.
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