Inherent inefficiency.
Innovation is inherently inefficient: more extreme, less efficient.
Feb 25, 2017 · 1 min read
Systems are efficient, innovation is inefficient. This relationship is direct. Inefficient innovation makes efficient systems. Innovation builds cranks. System turns cranks.
Innovation is wasteful in much the same way that science is wasteful. Through a series of experiments, a process of trial and error, an error-prone assumption-making and assumption-testing, the innovator makes progress by eliminating things that don’t work; gradually discovering things that do work.
This is a fractal pattern. It plays out on a micro-scale inside of companies, but also on a macro-scale throughout the economy. On the economic level, it is referred to as “Schumpeterian Waste” or “Creative Destruction”. A thousand startups must die to birth one Amazon.
