How We Succeed
First Principles Thinking drives our culture and success. We subscribe to the idea that all problems worth solving have to be broken down to their most basic truths or elements. In our workforce development programs, we use First Principles of Instruction, created by M. David Merrill, Professor Emeritus at Utah State University, as our instructional model. First Principles of Instruction are described as a Problem-Centered cycle of instruction beginning with Activation and continuing through Demonstration, Application which, when properly applied in an instructional product or setting, will increase student learning and thereby developing their applied intelligence.
In our research and services programs, First Principles Thinking permeates all that we do. When you use First Principles thinking, you are able to discover unconventional insights based on fundamental truths. We identify systemic and technical cyber risks rooted in people, process, or technology and break them down to their deepest roots. Then we reason up from there discounting all previous assumptions and continuously work the problem until we can find unique data-driven solutions and then repeat the process. This way of thinking leads to game-changing innovation.