The Theory and Practice of Good Enough

One of my favorite and often used aphorisms is, “Perfection is the enemy of good.”

Very often the essence of a promising development is obscured by added features or over-refining of an idea.

This concept is usually attributed to Voltaire. Business leaders have nuanced it: Edward de Castro, one of the founders of Data General, said, “Not everything worth doing is worth doing well”.

This philosophy was wonderfully chronicled in Tracy Kidder’s “The Soul of a New Machine”.

The_soul_of_a_new_machine_--_book_cover

Case in point: the concept of the “minimum viable product” practiced thirty five years before the term.

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