How to make inefficiency work for us

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 for 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

didn't 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 prussians

soldiers captured a French military

pharmacist named parmentier parmentier

at first was appalled by the morning

and noon and night

diet fed too 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 the guest of honor

even the king and queen of France

were but were persuaded to wear

potatoes the potato flowers pardon

me the king the king of War 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

Brittany's exploitation and callousness

played a role but it was because

of this monoculture that a million

people died and another 2 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 sell

take the electronic medical record

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

in a school bus dude from the wrong

angle can resemble a punching bag

so precious time is required to

eliminate misidentification false

negatives are a problem to algorithms

can learn a lot fast but they can

tell us only about the pest so many

future Classics get bad reviews

like Moby Dick or I 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

4 seconds that wasn't so unusual

but what was really brilliant was

that because of the recoil mechanism

it could return to the exact same

position without having to be re

aimed 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 War

prolonged it

the biggest cost of all maybe Miss

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

maybe 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

principal

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 patents

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

hello Lloyd in Rochester New York

had to go through what most corporations

would never have tolerated there

was one failure after another and

one of the special

was it was fire in fact when the

914 was finally released it still

had a device that it was called

a Scorch Eliminator but actually

it was a small fire extinguisher

built in

my answer to all these questions

is inspired in efficiency data and

measurement are essential but they

are 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 the 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 were 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

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 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 wait

forms can be created by imaginative

development of accidents Ted leske

and 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 let's key was inspired

to produce a starburst chandelier

that was probably the most notable

of its kind of the 20th century

4th 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 with 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 the

speaker is saying when we're taking

notes with a pen or pencil on paper

we are processing that information

we're making that our own and we

are learning much more actively

than we had just when we were just

transcribing what was being said

V get security through diversity

monoculture can be deadly remember

the

no it was efficient until it wasn't

diversity applies to organizations

to 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

6 achieve safety through redundancy

in human skills why did to 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 over

I did 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 camera technology nobody

has done more for efficiency than

Thomas Edison but his cost-cutting

broke down

is manager hired a so-called efficiency

engineer would advise him to save

money by using more of the film

stock that he 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

or 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 that Universal and then at

MGM becoming the ideal of the Hollywood

producer summing up to be truly

efficient we need optimal and efficiency

the shortest path maybe 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 sand

wall that he 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

and efficiency than strengthen it

sometimes the best way to move forward

is to follow a circle thank you