Brian Potter - The Origins of Efficiency

A Book with Legs

Smead Capital Management

Investing, Business, Management

4.2 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 3 November 2025

⏱️ 70 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In this episode, Cole Smead is joined by author Brian Potter to discuss his book “The Origins of Efficiency.” The two discuss the importance and profound impact of efficiency when producing goods and services. Potter also explains how improved efficiency in penicillin production changed the world, the five factors of the production process, and more!

Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to A Book with Legs, a podcast presented by Smead Capital Management.
0:07.9	At Smead Capital Management, we advise investors who play the long game.
0:12.3	You can learn more at Smeadcap.com or by calling your financial advisor.
0:38.2	Welcome to a book with legs podcast. I'm Cole Smead, CEO, and portfolio manager here at Smead Capital Management. At our firm, we are readers, and we believe in the power of books to help shape informed investors. In this podcast, we speak to great authors about their writings. The late great Charlie Munger prescribed using multiple mental models and analysis. We analyze their work through the lens of business,
0:43.5	markets, and people. In this episode, we will discuss running a process over and over and over and over
0:52.7	again. Brian Potter is joining us to discuss his recently published
0:56.4	book, The Origins of Efficiency. Little background on Brian for our listeners. He is the author
1:02.7	of Construction Physics newsletter and a senior infrastructure fellow at the Institute for Progress.
1:07.9	He previously worked at Katera, a soft bank backed construction startup.
1:12.0	He has a background in structural engineering. He has a master's of science and systems engineering.
1:18.2	And that was from, Brian, what was that, UCF, I want to say? University of Central Florida.
1:22.7	Yep, University of Central Florida. And he has a bachelor's of Structural Engineering from, as I like to call
1:28.2	it, and some others do, the rambling wreck from Georgia Tech. So, Brian, thank you for joining me today.
1:34.2	Thanks for having me. So I consider this a brief but exhaustive look at products, processes, and people.
1:44.2	That's how I would characterize it to someone.
1:46.8	What inspired you to put this pen to paper and write this story?
1:52.3	Yeah.
1:52.9	So as you said, my background is in the construction industry.
1:57.6	I spent most of my career working as a structural engineer designing different
2:02.5	types of buildings, apartment buildings, water treatment plants. Sure. You know, things like that.
2:07.9	And the industry always seemed like quite inefficient to me. Sure. You know, you know,
2:12.2	these buildings are built in a similar way that they've been built for decades and decades.
	...

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