💎 On the value of operational transparency in product design

For example, the bright red Powerball in Finish dishwashing tablets, as well as the salient red centre of Anticol’s medicated throat lozenges, illustrates “this is the hardworking bit.” When we see these products there’s no question in our minds where the unique value or effort is. They’re practically radioactive. As Rory Sutherland writes in Alchemy, the same is true of striped toothpaste.’ Psychologically, the red, blue and white coloured stripes give us a clear signal that the toothpaste is performing more than one function, aiding the belief that this single toothpaste can offer the trifecta of strong teeth, fresh breath and …

Excerpt from: Evolutionary Ideas: Unlocking ancient innovation to solve tomorrow’s challenges by Sam Tatam

💎 On the danger of only evaluating projects on what is easy to quantify

A question was given to a bunch of engineers about fifteen years ago: How do we make the journey to Paris better? They came up with a very good engineering solution, which was to spend £6 billion building completely new tracks from London to the coast and knocking about forty minutes off the 3.5 hour journey time. It strikes me as a slightly unimaginative way of improving a train journey to merely make it shorter. Now, what is the hedonistic opportunity cost of spending £6 billion pounds on railway tracks? Here’s a thought; what you could do is employ the world’s top male and female supermodels, pay them to walk the length of the train handing out free Château Pétrus for the entire duration of the journey. … At which point you’ll still have about £5 billion left in change, and people will ask for the trains to be slowed down.

Excerpt from: Transport for Humans: Are We Nearly There Yet? by Pete Dyson and Rory Sutherland