Worse is Better
Origin: Richard Gabriel
The Biological Bridge
This business construct is human-invented, but the outcome it's trying to achieve has deep biological roots.
The Full Picture
Richard Gabriel's 'Worse is Better': simple, incomplete solutions often outcompete perfect, complex ones. Biology demonstrates this constantly—rats are 'worse' than elephants (smaller brains, shorter lives, less impressive) but vastly more successful (population, range, adaptability). The mechanism: 'worse' solutions are faster to implement, easier to modify, cheaper to replicate. Perfect solutions are fragile; good-enough solutions are robust. Cockroaches are 'worse' than humans on every capability dimension except the only one that matters: not going extinct. Survival doesn't reward excellence; it rewards adequacy at scale.