Simplify: How the Best Businesses in the World Succeed

by Richard Koch

They do, however, represent a meaningful segment of the product universe, where greater complexity is accepted as long as a product performs better than its predecessors — or achieves something that was previously impossible or unavailable.

the car — while demonstrably faster and more comfortable than a horse-drawn coach (proposition-simplifying by being a joy to use) — is obviously a much more complex piece of kit

Some inventions are both seductive and commercially successful, up to a point, yet eventually complicate or even compromise our lives and their value.

Inherent trade-off with invention between simplifying some aspect of the product or the experience against the complexity it introduces in production, operation, or experience. New materials technologies/chemical processes have this characteristic (see hbr article on taking materials to market)

Discovering — finding something, as opposed to inventing it —

successful strategies to escape the market forces of perfect competition.

These strategies can simplify, but they are much more likely to add complexity.

Network effects: This is when product or service characteristics improve as the number of customers or participants rises.

Regulation:

Intellectual property:

Lock-in and switching costs:

Personal relationships:

Scarcity:

Niche effects:

Government:

Not-for-profit organizations:

As we can see, a substantial majority of all economic activity either largely or totally escapes market forces.

I.e. Held up or does not evolve according to market demand

two cardinal points should be remembered.

The first is that the large majority of business returns accrue to simplifiers.

you must investigate whether your firm can find a path to simplify and so vastly increase its value.

you also need to know whether your company is currently — or may become — dangerously exposed to a price- or proposition-simplifying competitor.

It is the simplifying strategies that are able to deliver the benefits of technology — via highly useful and/or affordable products and services — in ways that are relatively human-friendly.

Part of the equation are people... Benefit x people affected

the main justification for business

the good it does for many.

How will the fifty-dollar smartphone change the lives of African villagers? How will artificial intelligence change all of our lives and especially those of our children? How will quantum computing or the next big leap forward in the internet deliver advances that we never thought possible?

Asking ourselves, what is the major human benefit that this new technology might enable? How will this technology provide societal benefit?

you can bet that it will be simplifiers who deliver benevolent change in acceptable, affordable, and exciting ways.

You must come up with a radical simplifying idea.

Then you must develop a product or service that is dramatically simpler than any existing product or service

much simpler to make (and therefore at least 50 ...

the product or service must be so simple that it has the potential to become universal.

The business system must be redesigned too, so that the new product and the company both sit at the center of a new web. Customers, suppliers, and other important players,

The product or service must be internationalized before imitators can launch their versions.