It’s often said that simple ideas scale better than complex ones. While this seems intuitively true, it’s worth exploring why this is the case.

Simple ideas scale well for a few key reasons:

  • They are easy to understand and discuss.
  • They can be layered on top of each other effectively.

However, developing simple ideas is surprisingly difficult:

  1. Reality is inherently complex and doesn’t naturally lend itself to simplicity.
  2. To get started, you must identify the most relevant details and eliminate the distractions.
  3. Organize these details into a loosely coupled, cohesive set of information.
  4. Develop ideas that connect and explain these sets of information.
  5. Test these ideas by using them to predict real-world outcomes.
  6. Iterate until your ideas accurately reflect reality.

This process of refining reaity into simplicity is challenging, but the payoff is significant: ideas that are both powerful and scalable.