Conversation

Big projects tend to swamp small projects somehow. There’s some sort of feedback loop by which the biggest project will mop up disproportionate amounts of all surplus attention/resources.
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So if you have 2 projects at 60%, 40%, then they will commandeer surpluses in a 80-20 ratio. The big will grow bigger, and do so faster over time.
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Efficiencies of attention scale. Focus and resource concentration are a result rather than cause of project scale/scope.
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On the flip side, the project that consistently gets less than it’s share of surplus resources will starve and die, growing relatively ABD absolutely smaller. All non-trivial projects depend on access to available surpluses to deal with uncertainty and entropy.
Replying to
This surplus is how projects get their supply of luck. All non-trivial projects need non-zero luck to succeed. Bigger projects get luckier and do so faster and faster. Smaller projects get unluckier till they die. Serendipity vs zemblanity.
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Replying to
Was ABD a typo for "AND"? Because that's plausibly how a lot of PhD candidates end up All But Dissertation - they get jobs, and the time/energy needed to finish writing their theses gets diverted to work/family/commuting/literally anything else, don't make me look at my thesis...
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Replying to
This, the first problem to solve; where to spend focus: Solve the business 0-1 Problem? (demands customer-focus): Gains early revenue as validation -or- Span the empirical innovation chasm? (demands idiosyncratic project-focus, drains resources): Attains marketable leverage