Addition by Subtraction

Steve Jobs described innovation as “saying no to a thousand things.” To Jobs, focus meant turning down hundreds of good ideas to concentrate on a few carefully selected options. His ability to say no and subtract bucks the normal human tendency to solve through addition. At an individual level, this tendency blinds us to easy solutions. At a company level, it leads to bad strategy.

Less is More

Marie Kondo aside, people favor addition to subtraction. When asked to make improvements, we typically add things rather than removing them. Instead of decluttering, we buy a new rug. A recent study by Gabrielle Adams, Benjamin Converse, Andrew Hales, and Leidy Klotz, all from the University of Virginia, found this result across a variety of situations.

In one study, the goal was to save a Lego man from being crushed with a brick. The figurine was perched below a Lego tower of dubious structural integrity. Participants were asked to modify the blocks so that when a brick was placed on the roof, it wouldn’t collapse. One solution was to remove the orphan pillar support (pictured below). Another was to buttress the pillar with more Legos. The overwhelming majority of participants, 78%, chose the latter.

Source: Nature, Adding is favoured over subtracting in problem solving, April 7, 2021.

Multiple observational studies came to the same conclusion. These included rearranging patterns to make them symmetrical…