A Great Lesson in Business Efficiency from Genius Inventor and Engineer Rube Goldberg (Article & Video)

 

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Lessons in Business Efficiency from Genius Inventor and Engineer Rube Goldberg (Article and Video)

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In the course of modern history, perhaps no individual has made things more complicated, complex and unnecessary than the beloved, iconic and fascinating Rube Goldberg.

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Reuben Lucius Goldberg (1883-1970) was born in San Francisco, California. He graduated from the University of California Berkeley with a degree in Engineering. He was a Pulitzer Prize winning cartoonist, engineer and inventor best known for his series of complex diagrams and renderings of machines and contraptions which turned the most simple, mundane, everyday tasks into intricate, elaborate, multi-step, time-wasting complexities.

The end-product? They are fascinating, and when they are built and put to the test, they actually work!

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How about a few examples

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Need to put toothpaste on your toothbrush? Forget about just squeezing the tube in the ordinary manner. Give this one a try:

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Care to fill a glass with water? Don’t just pour it from a pitcher…give this device a whirl:

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Don’t believe that these devices actually work? Check out a video of a Rube Goldberg machine in action. There are contests held regularly to design and test these contraptions with major universities and engineering clubs as sponsors.

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Check out this absolutely incredible short YouTube clip of a Rube Goldberg cocktail-making machine:

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Now you get the picture!
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But We Are In the World of Business!
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I once took a computer programming course. After studying for several months, I was asked to write code in the C+ language to solve a not-very-difficult problem. It took me several hours and the code was approximately 50 lines long. My teacher then demonstrated to me how it could be done in 3 lines in less than five minutes. It was the epiphany moment when I realized that computer programming was not for me!
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The world of business is a rat-race. In this 21st Century, high-pressure, dog-eat-dog environment, it’s about getting things done quickly, effectively and most importantly…efficiently! It’s about finding simple, elegant, time-saving solutions for the problems, tasks and projects that we must complete.
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I’ve been a fan of this legendary man and visionary thinker ever since I was a youngster playing Ideal’s classic board-game Mouse Trap and reading Charles Keller’s The Best of Rube Goldberg.
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Rube Goldberg was a genius! His thinking led to some very unique and highly-entertaining concepts. But in the world of business you must ask yourself this simple question…
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…Am I making things more difficult than they need to be?
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Image Credits: Rube Goldberg: nnndb.com;  Toothpaste Diagram: dashboards.tv.com; Filling Water Giagram: pomperaug.com; cityscape: supercheats.com
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Yonatan Maisel is a business blogger, history buff and author. He started a business blog one year ago. 90% of his new clients now find their way to him as a direct result of having read one or more posts. Unfortunately for the foreseeable future, Yonatan is not accepting new clients. He is a regular contributor here at www.jobshuk.com.

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