If you think better always prevails in a high-tech environment, then here’s a story about the unrivaled persuasive power of simplicity –

Back when I was a young engineer in R&D, I developed a very small and cheap component for replacing a rather costly outdated one in a project I was working on.

One day the head of a manufacturing line calls me up and schedules a meeting with me and a project manager who may need what I’ve developed for another project.

We start the meeting and the project manager explains:

I have a rather old product.

Despite its antiquated, it has proven very successful with our clients, and I don’t want to change anything…

My problem is this one component that’s obsolete in the design and I have a new batch to manufacture… it’s hard to find a trustworthy vendor with who has this component in their storage…