It's Broken, Let's Fix It: The Zeitgeist and Modern Enterprise

We used to have this saying:"Ifit ain't broken, don't fix it." That was a pow­ erful piece of wisdom. It meant: "Ifsomething should, against all odds, func­ tion properly, then do not touch it, you might make things worse!" But then, the re-engineering fashion emerged, and somebody whom I used to deeply admire as one of the most brilliant teachers I ever saw at work, when he was still an Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering at the Massachusetts In­ stitute of Technology (MIT), coin...