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Tuesday, May 29, 2007

The Laws of Simplicity

To achieve sustainable business excellence is a journey that few organizations are willing to take. For those that undertake the journey, there are ways to make the complexity of continual business improvement simplified: it takes discipline.

Like any business improvement program based on best practices, a goal is to simplify processes along the way, to bring about balance, predictability and sustainability.

Here are John Maeda's "Laws of Simplicity":

  1. Reduce: The simplest way to achieve simplicity is through thoughtful reduction.
  2. Organize: Organization makes a system of many appear fewer.
  3. Time: Savings in time feel like simplicity.
  4. Learn: Knowledge makes everything simpler.
  5. Differences: Simplicity and complexity need each other.
  6. Context: What lies in the periphery of simplicity is definitely not peripheral.
  7. Emotion: More emotions are better than less.
  8. Trust: In simplicity we trust.
  9. Failure: Some things can never be made simple.
  10. The One: Simplicity is about subtracting the obvious, and adding the meaningful.

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