Simplify: How the Best Businesses in the World Succeed

by Richard Koch

Oliver Wendell Holmes famously said “For the simplicity that lies this side of complexity, I would not give a fig, but for the simplicity that lies on the other side of complexity, I would give my life.”

This is profoundly true. The simplicity arrived at, at first pass, is often naive simplicity. The simplicity that is reached after going through complexity, is usually borne of wisdom.

as the nineteenth-century philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “As to methods there may be a million and then some, but principles are few. The man who grasps principles can successfully select his own methods. The man who tries methods, ignoring principles, is sure to have trouble.”