How to make inefficiency work for us

Is our obsession with efficiency actually making us less efficient? In this revelatory talk, writer and historian Edward Tenner discusses the promises and dangers of our drive to get things done as quickly as possible -- and suggests seven ways we can use "inspired inefficiency" to be more productive.

Who doesn't love efficiency?

I do.

Efficiency means more for less.

More miles per gallon,
more light per watt,

more words per minute.

More for less is the next best thing

to something for nothing.

Algorithms, big data, the cloud
are giving us more for less.

Are we heading toward
a friction-free utopia

or toward a nightmare of surveillance?

I don't know.

My interest is in the present.

And I'd like to show you

how the past can help us
understand the present.

There's nothing that summarizes

both the promise
and the danger of efficiency

like the humble potato.

The potato originated in the Andes

and it spread to Europe
from the ancient Inca.

The potato is a masterpiece
of balanced nutrition.

And it had some very powerful friends.

King Frederick the Great of Prussia

was the first enthusiast.

He believed that the potato could help

increase the population
of healthy Prussians.

And the more healthy Prussians,

the more healthy Prussian soldiers.

And some of those
healthy Prussian soldiers

captured a French military
pharmacist named Parmentier.

Parmentier, at first, was appalled

by the morning, noon and night diet

fed to POWs of potatoes,

but he came to enjoy it.

He thought they were making
him a healthier person.

And so, when he was released,

he took it on himself
to spread the potato to France.

And he had some powerful friends.

Benjamin Franklin
advised him to hold a banquet,

at which every dish included potatoes.

And Franklin was a guest of honor.

Even the king and queen of France

were persuaded to wear potatoes,

potato flowers, pardon me.

(Laughter)

The king wore a potato
flower in his lapel,

and the queen wore
a potato flower in her hair.

That was a truly great
public relations idea.

But there was a catch.

The potato was too efficient
for Europe's good.

In Ireland, it seemed a miracle.

Potatoes flourished, the population grew.

But there was a hidden risk.

Ireland's potatoes
were genetically identical.

They were a very efficient breed,
called the Lumper.

And the problem with the Lumper

was that a blight from South America

that affected one potato

would affect them all.

Britain's exploitation
and callousness played a role,

but it was because of this monoculture

that a million people died

and another two million
were forced to emigrate.

A plant that was supposed to end famine

created one of the most tragic ones.

The problems of efficiency today

are less drastic but more chronic.

They can also prolong the evils

that they were intended to solve.

Take the electronic medical records.

It seemed to be the answer
to the problem of doctors' handwriting,

and it had the benefit

of providing much better data
for treatments.

In practice, instead, it has meant

much more electronic paperwork

and physicians are now complaining
that they have less,

rather than more time
to see patients individually.

The obsession with efficiency
can actually make us less efficient.

Efficiency also bites back
with false positives.

Hospitals have hundreds
of devices registering alarms.

Too often, they're crying wolf.

It takes time to rule those out.

And that time results in fatigue,
stress and, once more,

the neglect of the problems
of real patients.

There are also false positives
in pattern recognition.

A school bus, viewed from the wrong angle,

can resemble a punching bag.

So precious time is required

to eliminate misidentification.

False negatives are a problem, too.

Algorithms can learn a lot -- fast.

But they can tell us only about the past.

So many future classics
get bad reviews, like "Moby Dick,"

or are turned down
by multiple publishers,

like the "Harry Potter" series.

It can be wasteful
to try to avoid all waste.

Efficiency is also a trap
when the opposition copies it.

Take the late 19th-century

French 75-millimeter artillery piece.

It was a masterpiece of lethal design.

This piece could fire a shell
every four seconds.

But that wasn't so unusual.

What was really brilliant
was that because of the recoil mechanism,

it could return to the exact same position

without having to be reaimed.

So the effective rate of firing
was drastically increased.

Now, this seemed to be a way for France

to defeat Germany
the next time they fought.

But, predictably, the Germans were working

on something very similar.

So when the First World War broke out,

the result was the trench warfare

that lasted longer
than anybody had expected.

A technology that was designed
to shorten the war, prolonged it.

The biggest cost of all
may be missed opportunities.

The platform economy
connecting buyers and sellers

can be a great investment,

and we have seen that
in the last few weeks.

Companies that are still losing
hundreds of millions of dollars

may be creating billionaires
with initial public offerings.

But the really difficult inventions

are the physical and chemical ones.

They mean bigger risks.

They may be losing out,
because hardware is hard.

It's much harder to scale up
a physical or chemical invention

than it is a software-based invention.

Think of batteries.

Lithium-ion batteries
in portable devices and electric cars

are based on a 30-year-old principle.

How many smartphone batteries today

will last a full day on a single charge?

Yes, hardware is hard.

It took over 20 years for the patent

on the principle of dry photocopying,

by Chester Carlson in 1938,

to result in the Xerox 914 copier
introduced in 1959.

The small, brave company,
Haloid in Rochester, NY

had to go through what most corporations
would never have tolerated.

There was one failure after another,

and one of the special problems was fire.

In fact, when the 914
was finally released,

it still had a device
that was called a scorch eliminator

but actually it was
a small fire extinguisher built in.

My answer to all these questions is:
inspired inefficiency.

Data and measurement are essential,
but they're not enough.

Let's leave room for human intuition
and human skills.

There are seven facets
of inspired inefficiency.

First, take the scenic route,
say yes to serendipity.

Wrong turns can be productive.

Once, when I was exploring
the east bank of the Mississippi,

I took the wrong turn.

I was approaching a toll bridge
crossing the great river,

and the toll collector
said I could not turn back.

So I paid my 50 cents --
that's all it was at the time --

and I was in Muscatine, Iowa.

I had barely heard of Muscatine,

but it proved to be a fascinating place.

Muscatine had some
of the world's richest mussel beds.

A century ago,
a third of the world's buttons

were produced in Muscatine,

1.5 billion a year.

The last plants have closed now,

but there is still a museum
of the pearl button industry

that's one of the most
unusual in the world.

But buttons were only the beginning.

This is the house in Muscatine

where China's future
president stayed in 1986,

as a member of an agricultural delegation.

It is now the Sino-US Friendship House,

and it's a pilgrimage site
for Chinese tourists.

How could I have foreseen that?

(Laughter)

Second, get up from the couch.

Sometimes it can be more efficient

to do things the hard way.

Consider the internet of things.

It's wonderful
to be able to control lights,

set the thermostat, even vacuum the room

without leaving one's seat.

But medical research has shown

that actually fidgeting,
getting up, walking around

is one of the best things
you can do for your heart.

It's good for the heart and the waistline.

Third, monetize your mistakes.

Great forms can be created

by imaginative development of accidents.

Tad Leski, an architect
of the Metropolitan Opera

at Lincoln Center,

was working on a sketch
and some white ink fell on the drawing.

Other people might just
have thrown it away,

but Leski was inspired
to produce a starburst chandelier

that was probably the most notable
of its kind of the 20th century.

Fourth, sometimes try the hard way.

It can be more efficient
to be less fluent.

Psychologists call this
desirable difficulty.

Taking detailed notes with a keyboard

would seem to be the best way
to grasp what a lecturer is saying,

to be able to review it verbatim.

However, studies have shown
that when we have to abbreviate,

when we have to summarize
what a speaker is saying,

when we're taking notes
with a pen or a pencil on paper,

we're processing that information.

We're making that our own,

and we are learning much more actively

than when we were just transcribing

what was being said.

Fifth, get security through diversity.

Monoculture can be deadly.

Remember the potato?

It was efficient until it wasn't.

Diversity applies to organizations, too.

Software can tell what has made people
in an organization succeed in the past.

And it's useful, sometimes,
in screening employees.

But remember, the environment
is constantly changing,

and software, screening software,
has no way to tell,

and we have no way to tell,

who is going to be useful in the future.

So, we need to supplement
whatever the algorithm tells us

by an intuition and by looking for people

with various backgrounds
and various outlooks.

Sixth, achieve safety
through redundancy and human skills.

Why did two 737 Max aircraft crash?

We still don't know the full story,

but we know how to
prevent future tragedies.

We need multiple independent systems.

If one fails, then the others
can override it.

We also need skilled operators
to come to the rescue

and that means constant training.

Seventh, be rationally extravagant.

Thomas Edison was a pioneer
of the film industry,

as well as of camera technology.

Nobody has done more
for efficiency than Thomas Edison.

But his cost cutting broke down.

His manager hired
a so-called efficiency engineer,

who advised him to save money

by using more of the film stock
that he'd shot,

having fewer retakes.

Well, Edison was a genius,

but he didn't understand
the new rules of feature films

and the fact that failure
was becoming the price of success.

On the other hand, some great directors,
like Erich Von Stroheim,

were the opposite.

They were superb dramatists,

and Stroheim was also a memorable actor.

But they couldn't live
within their budgets.

So that was not sustainable.

It was Irving Thalberg,
a former secretary with intuitive genius,

who achieved rational extravagance.

First at Universal, and then at MGM,

becoming the ideal
of the Hollywood producer.

Summing up, to be truly efficient,

we need optimal inefficiency.

The shortest path may be a curve

rather than a straight line.

Charles Darwin understood that.

When he encountered a tough problem,

he made a circuit of a trail,

the sandwalk that he'd built
behind his house.

A productive path
can be physical, like Darwin's,

or a virtual one, or an unforeseen detour

from a path we had laid out.

Too much efficiency can weaken itself.

But a bit of inspired inefficiency
can strengthen it.

Sometimes, the best way to move forward

is to follow a circle.

Thank you.

(Applause)