While companies assume there is necessarily a trade-off between efficiency and responsiveness in a constrained environment, research shows that only those organizations operating near the performance frontier (the optimal performance a company can achieve) should expect trade-offs. The companies that operate away from the frontier have the potential to improve both efficiency and responsiveness; the companies that operate at or close to optimal performance levels can strive to shift their frontier through innovation and gain sustainable competitive advantage.

The first rule of any technology used in a business is that automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency. The second is that automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency.

There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done.

Efficiency is intelligent laziness.