Cash Curve

Reading "Payback" by James P. Andrew and Harold L. Sirkin.

The pivotal idea in the book is cash curve. A powerful visual tool to help you get a clue where your innovation possibly would go. The methodology looks like some business art at first look.

If that's really the case, it's just beautiful yet useless.

Something is universally true is also something universally useless. Throughout the book, it struggles between a philosophy and a statistic. If a philosophy, it would retain beauty but lose practical meaning; if a statistic, it would become ugly and make reader confused.

Simplicity is beauty. But it has to go through the reverse process to become something useful. For cash curve, it does bring fresh air. But only guys knowing how to breathe well would stand out.