Thread by @dvassallo

A journalist once asked an @f1 engineer: Would you rather have a lighter car, or a more powerful car?

The engineer's answer was very relevant to business and risk taking. 👇

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The answer was that having less weight is transmutative, so it's generally preferable to more power.

Power only helps acceleration and top speed, while lightness can be converted to lots of other things, depending on the race track and other circumstances.

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Lightness not only helps top speed and acceleration, but also inherently helps braking, minimum speed in low-speed corners, tyre wear, fuel consumption, etc.

But more importantly, lightness can be converted to many other things. It has a transmutative property.

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Weight can be added back to the bottom of the car to lower the center of gravity, and improve high-speed cornering.

Or it can be added back to the front to improve the weight balance.

Or it can be used to build stronger (and heavier) parts to improve overall reliability.

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A lighter car gives the engineer more optionality than many other innovations. It increases the odds of being able to set up the quickest car for a given race track.

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That's why F1 teams manage to find some really creative ways to save weight, including stripping the glossy sheen off the paint: autosport.com/f1/news/141528…

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There are at least 2 things in business that resemble the characteristics of lightness in a racing car:

CASH. And AGILITY.

Both are transmutative.

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Cash can be converted to time. If something is not working out as expected, you can use cash to buy time and improve it. Or pivot.

If you can afford to buy time, you extend your guaranteed survival. Being in the game is the most important thing in risk taking.

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Cash can also be used to hire someone to help you, or to promote your business, or to improve margins, or to build a safety net, or to experiment with new revenue streams, or to spend less time at work, or to stop doing things you'd rather not do anymore, etc.

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Agility is what gives you optionality once you've bought some time.

a·gil·i·ty — "the ability to move quickly and easily"

Moving quickly gives you the ability to place many bets.

Moving easily allows you to stack the odds in your favor by adapting to new information.

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Just like cash, you can transmute your agility into many other things, depending on the circumstances. Agility can be used to develop the business faster, or to try many parallel things, or to focus on something that's working, or to abandon things that aren't, etc.

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To realize a desired outcome in an uncertain environment you need time (survival), and the ability to place many bets (ideally with the odds stacked in your favor).

- Cash gives you time (survival).

- Agility gives you many bets (with odds in your favor).

Good luck! 🎲

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