The elephant model is a thinking tool often used to describe and analyze complex systems. Its core idea is to abstract complex things into elements that are easy to understand and work with, thereby helping people see things with a clearer perspective. The elephant model gets its name from a classic story about a group of blind people trying to understand an elephant, but each of them has a different understanding of the elephant due to their different angles of touch. This story illustrates how, when faced with complex issues, a single perspective often fails to capture the whole picture.

In the elephant model, the parts represent different dimensions or levels of the system, which are interrelated and complement each other. This model emphasizes comprehensiveness and encourages people to combine their observations and understandings from multiple perspectives to gain a comprehensive understanding. For example, in enterprise management, decision-making is often affected by many factors such as finance, market and human resources. By building an elephant model, managers can bring these factors together to develop more rational and effective strategies.

In addition, the elephant model also highlights the limitations of information. Each person may be limited by personal experience and cognition when accessing information, so the model can serve as a communication platform for participants to share their insights and information. In the process, our joint efforts can promote a deeper understanding of the problem.

In scientific research, the elephant model is also important. Many research problems are extremely complex and require interdisciplinary knowledge and collaboration between experts in different fields. By building elephant models, scientists are able to integrate perspectives and data from different disciplines to conduct more comprehensive studies that are more effective and innovative.