Good Enough: A Reader Chimes In

To the Editor:

I enjoyed reading your treatise on Good-Enough innovation and wholeheartedly agree with your assessment. I know many people who won’t even attempt anything new unless the result offers some guarantee of perfection. They always talk about how they’ve got their eye out for opportunities that can deliver the “big win” and the “slam-dunk” but these folks never seem to get much accomplished. Maybe they think it’s too risky?

Please accept the following list of good-enough innovations that I think are worth mentioning.

If you decide to post this please sign me,

Anita Vidwell

1949, Lego-brand “Automatic Binding Bricks” (a.k.a. “Legos”). How could you guys have missed this one? Legos were all over Bob Capp’s article in Wired: The Lego version of Nirvana’s Nevermind album cover was clearly meant to represent MP3’s harsh rendering of music. The Lego sculpture of a desk telephone tells me that Skype may not be as good as a real telephone, but it’s close enough for jazz (no pun on the previous musical reference). A Lego model of the Predator plane can’t actually fly, but then the actual MQ-1 Predator is too small to carry a pilot, so it’s kind of a toy plane that drops real bombs. Lego bricks are kind of an anti-toy because the play they inspire has to come entirely from the child’s imagination. Legos are about the only toy that adults can play with without shame. As a kid, Legos inspired my little brother to flush them down the toilet. He really liked plumbing.