Don't Stare at the Speedometer – Look at the Road
Efficiency is the Enemy of Strategy
How can you increase the "GDP per capita" in any country?
There are two ways:
1. Increase GDP
2. Reduce the population
At a recent strategy off-site I led, a debate arose: can a metric like payroll-to-revenue ratio be a strategic goal?
No, it can’t.
Any goal in the form of a fraction is about efficiency. But efficiency can’t be a strategic goal—with only one exception.
Robotic pizza
In 2013, the fast-food market looked archaic.
– Too much manual labor
– Too little automation
Alex Garden, who had worked for tech companies all his life, filed a patent for cooking food as it was being delivered. And in 2015, he co-founded Zume Pizza, a startup that received $445 million in investments but was liqudated in 2023 and became one of the biggest flops in Silicon Valley history.
Garden believed in efficiency and automation.
He built a company that made pizza with robots in a warehouse and then finished it the robotic kitchens on the wheels.
When you ordered a pizza, a bus full …