Innovation — science and engineering — is the key to a sustainable economy.
Lately, there has been way too much talk about minting dollars and too little about minting our next Thomas Edison, Bob Noyce, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Vint Cerf, Jerry Yang, Marc Andreessen, Sergey Brin, Bill Joy and Larry Page. Adding to that list is the only stimulus that matters. Otherwise, we’re just Russia with a printing press.
Management is about process not product. All discovery is insubordination.
Given: we face an enemy that insufficiently kills our soldiers and insufficiently destroys our materiel versus spreadsheets, PERT charts, and the overall business plan. We must then kill our own soldiers and destroy our own materiel to comply with model projections. If the enemy and then we fail in assigned missions there will be no performance bonuses.
This is why the Vietnam War, universally appraised as a fragging stooopid thing to have done in its every aspect including duration and final negotiation, was a brilliant set piece. Ditto Iraq and Afghanistan, Wall Street, an Detroit. The losses were staggering and nothing was accomplished start to end. It was managerially perfect down to the smallest parameterized DCF/ROI. Preferred Suppliers made a $trillion in constant dollars. Everybody got promotions. Nixon had no plan to end the war and he got elected to put it into action. Brilliant, and 100% as advertised!