A pretty basic assumption of this site is that keeping things simple is better for you and better for your customers or users. As part of that assumption, I think companies that focus on simplicity will be most successful (though they need to do it well).
Bob Sullivan says complexity is profitable:
“Most people just kind of surrender in the face of all this confusion. And a confused consumer is a profitable consumer. It’s much easier to make people pay extra and lose a whole lot of money when they’ve given up keeping track of what their real costs are.
There’s a great interview with Sullivan on NPR’s Fresh Air. He talks about hidden fees, unethical term changes, and email scams.
Complexity, like a magician’s banter, is a distraction for big company sleight of hand.
Via Josh.
That interview also inspired me to subscribe to Bob Sullivan’s column on msnbc: http://redtape.msnbc.com/
Simplicity is where form follows function. As in architecture. A simple concrete.. steel & glass structure is strong, long lasting and very low maintenance. Businesses build their own structures like that. But.. for the “marketplace” – ergo, us consumers, complexity of garishness & materials that rot, rust, blow away.. crumble.. that is where the money is.
I had a discussion today about how we humans try to complicate everything we get our grubby little hands on. I think that a lot of the complexity that we build into everything has a reason. Most times the reasons are not valid. Normally we complicate a process so that we can be percieved as smart or even superior to people around us. Most times people who concieve simple solutions to a complex problem are dismissed as being insignificant, after all the solution was simple, right?
I don’t know how true it is but I once heard that Americans spent millions of dollars developing a space pen, apparently the Russians used a pencil. Regardless of the accuracy I think it is a pretty good example.