

Inefficiencies are what make you special - dabent
http://37signals.com/svn/posts/2038-inefficiencies-are-what-make-you-special

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ewjordan
The prime example of inefficiencies helping business is elBulli? _Really?_

Somehow I doubt that all, or even most, of elBulli's inefficiencies are
helping it "succeed" - according to Wikipedia, it has operated at a loss for
the last decade. The only reason it stays afloat is that Ferran Adrià
leverages his status in the culinary world to bring in income from other
sources. The restaurant is not a business, by any stretch of the imagination;
it's a playground, maintained only as a labor of love, managed more for the
pleasure of the owner than to make money. It's easy to create something
fantastic if you don't have to think about costs or profit...

If you're one of the most highly respected Xs in the world, and can make a
good living writing books and giving lectures, sure, go ahead, follow suit,
create a fantasy world for yourself that you can finance based on your fame,
and run it without fussing yourself over any difficult tradeoffs. Who knows,
it might even help your real business by giving you more credentials in the
industry, so it could be a net win.

That doesn't make it a business model for everyone else, though.

If you _can't_ leverage your fame into a substantial paycheck, please don't
try to emulate "businesses" that survive only based on cash infusions from the
owners..

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dabent
But on a larger scale, it helps Ferran Adrià make money, even thought the
restaurant loses cash, he ends up making money by being highly respected, in
part for elBulli.

It's kind of like the New York Yankees. I've heard they lose money as a team
because they rather inefficiently just throw large sums of money at top
players to win the World Series. So much money even sell-out crowds and post
season ticket sales don't cover costs. But the owner of the team ends up
making money off of other Yankees-related properties.

~~~
ewjordan
_But on a larger scale, it helps Ferran Adrià make money, even thought the
restaurant loses cash, he ends up making money by being highly respected, in
part for elBulli._

I totally agree that the restaurant's _existence_ probably helps Adrià make
money, even if on the books it's a loss.

But I have no idea whether all of the strange things about it contribute to
the success - it's only open a few months a year, only takes reservations on
one day per year, doesn't try to push down the costs of supplies, etc. The
simple fact that they book an entire _season_ of reservations in one day
indicates to me that regardless of the cost structure, they are not charging
anywhere near what the market would be happy to support, and that's a business
change that could be made without any reflection whatsoever on Adrià's talent,
so it shouldn't have any impact on the second order benefits.

Artists of all sorts tend to be poor at running businesses because of an
inability to figure out which inefficiencies actually help and which ones
hurt. They stubbornly assume that all of them are important, and F-U if you
don't like it. I don't see any particular business genius happening at
elBulli, what I see is an artist that in this case can get away with being a
diva because of a truly extreme case of talent that pays off in other ways.
And again, that's fine, _great_ , even, if you can do it. PG couldn't work on
Arc at such a leisurely pace and with such a perfectionist attitude without
other successes to support him while he "burns money" on it, and when
everything finally comes out the other end, we may all be far better off for
the fact that he is able to do it that way.

My main point, however, was that there's no lesson to be learned here unless
you're already an industry unto yourself without your business. Very few
people are lucky enough to be in that situation, and once you're there, you
probably don't need any advice from anyone, as long as you don't really mess
up, you'll always be able to pay the bills one way or another.

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jwb119
that's a pretty narrow definition of inefficient. i would say efficient
practices are the ones that add the most value, but i suppose that wouldn't
make as interesting a title for an article..

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teej
And efficiencies are what make you big and profitable. El Bulli may be the #1
restaurant in the world, but it runs in the red every year. In contrast, the
predictable, efficient, and unquirky McDonalds does $4bn in the black every
year.

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pchristensen
Or more accurately, the minimum requirement isn't always best for business.
You could say that cheap packaging and presentation is an inefficient use of a
marketing opportunity.

