In Praise of Incrementalism (Rebroadcast)

Freakonomics Radio

Freakonomics Radio + Stitcher

Documentary, Society & Culture

4.6 • 32K Ratings

🗓️ 28 June 2018

⏱️ 49 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

What do Renaissance painting, civil-rights movements, and Olympic cycling have in common? In each case, huge breakthroughs came from taking tiny steps. In a world where everyone is looking for the next moonshot, we shouldn’t ignore the power of incrementalism.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Our previous episode of Freakonomics Radio was called In Praise of Maintenance.
0:11.6	We asked if our cultural obsession with innovation has led us to neglect the fact that things
0:16.7	also need to be taken care of.
0:18.6	We talked about sewers.
0:20.4	Certainly Rome understood that engineering and infrastructure was a huge part of making
0:25.8	its city function.
0:27.4	About bridges?
0:28.4	It's a remarkable and not a very happy tale.
0:31.8	We talked about housework.
0:33.4	They're doing almost as much unpaid maintenance work as they are paid work.
0:39.0	And we talked about the nuts and bolts of the digital economy.
0:42.2	All of that is infrastructure.
0:45.0	We wound up talking about a pet project of mine, which is trying to digitally archive
0:50.1	all my work and personal files.
0:52.6	So this is about maintenance?
0:54.0	Yes.
0:55.0	It's losing the 200 pounds and then staying that way.
0:57.4	This project was daunting until someone helped me frame it differently.
1:02.2	It's all about prioritization one step at a time.
1:05.6	One step at a time.
1:08.1	Increment by increment.
1:10.4	It got me to thinking about the value of incrementalism in a moonshot world.
	...

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