Dreyfus reinforced all the lessons that Arthur had learned at McKinsey, and provided an ongoing antidote to the economics classes. “He believed in getting to the heart of a problem,” says Arthur. “Instead of solving incredibly complicated equations, he taught me to keep simplifying the problem until you found something you could deal with. Look for what made a problem tick. Look for the key factor, the key ingredient, the key solution.” Dreyfus would not let him get away with fancy mathematics for its own sake.
