Weakest link (Reverse salients)

On my way back home after a recent client visit i happen to pick a strategy + business latest edition magazine by Booz | Allen | Hamilton, one of the article titled "The weakest link" by Nicholas G. Carr summed it up as below

"A products vulnerabilities can point the way to lucrative new business opportunities". Interesting and valid view point, this is how new products version/ideas are concieved for e.g. win3.1->win95->win98->winxp->vista.

Reverse salients = bottlenecks The author describes about aircraft manufacturing industry, at the close of 1920 the industry was pursuing a goal to build faster aeroplanes. The aircraft speed was being limited by its "wheels", the entire industry was trying to solve this problem, the wheels when left outside created a friction at higher velocities which inturn had a negative effect on the speed of the airplane, at lower velocities the friction was having minimal impact. What a striking similarity to the software/hardware performance, for instance an application performs optimally below a specific threshold beyond that the performance detiorates.When we remove bottlencks --> "reverse salients" the performance of an application improves only to be limited by some other "reverse salient".

By the way they had a tiny O-ring gasket --> a revolutionary solution which increased the speed of aircrafts , here i am at home with my loved ones if not for this great idea who knows i would have still been travelling back home:-).