Waste

Everyone knows that in a small enough company, or a narrow enough domain, that waste is bad. If you make paper airplanes, but lose 80% of the paper along the way...your competitor down the street is likely to be able to make the airplanes cheaper...and you lose.

What is highly non-obvious to most folks is that in larger enterprises, and in particular, in society as a whole, waste could be argued to be the source of economic growth. Here's the distinction: IN a given (small) system, one is required to choose a system and follow it. In a larger, even marginally complex system, it is massively non-obvious (completely opaque?) which approach will work best, or indeed work at all in a stable-ish, long term state. Indeed, the answers are frequently still unknown after 10 or 20 years of experimentation. And when outside circumstances change, the changes frequently change the optimal configuration in further non-obvious ways. The ONLY way to capture the stable long-term benefit is to try LOTS of things that don't work...and in doing so, find a few that do.

Growth is about innovation. Innovation is primarily about failing a lot, and wasting huge piles of resources trying stuff that doesn't work. And 9/10 innovators fail badly. Something in their plan, their execution, or their cashflow gets screwed up, and their try doesn't work. But...that 1/10 creates a benefit for a lot of folks. And 1/1000 creates a measurable benefit for a significant portion of humanity.

We need to celebrate the waste that comes from a bunch of crazy folks trying stuff that ain't gonna work...at least so long as most of its costs and significant chunks of its benefits accrue to the crazy folks who try it. In that case...it's all upside for the rest of us.