I read with a measure of interest Morgen Witzel’s Management from the Masters: From Kautilya to Warren Buffett (2013). It is an eclectic compilation of “laws” of management right from the “Law of Entropy” which is actually a scientific law to Drucker’s rule which states: “The only valid purpose of a business is to create a customer.” Some other “laws” mentioned in the book are “Moore’s law”, “The Pareto Principle”, “Parkinson’s Law” and “The Peter Principle”.
While Witzel is sound in his management theories, he distorts his message by unnecessarily bringing in scientific notions such as entropy and evolution. He says: “[E]ntropy is a measure of the amount of energy that escapes from or is not available to a given process.” As a chemical engineer, I object to this oversimplification. The best way of characterizing entropy, following Boltzmann, is as a measure of disorder in a system.
Witzel also claims that “within a given system, entropy increases over time.” This is only true for an isolated system with no energy or mass exchanges. For a system with heat exchange, it is the free energy that minimizes over time.
Witzel confuses entropic decay (disorder) with path-dependence (or complexity). Entropy is a state function and is path-independent. However, in many places, Witzel equates entropy with path-dependence which is a feature of “emergent phenomena”. Witzel poses the question: “Why do we continue to use QWERTY keyboard even though we know it is not the most user-friendly?” I can understand that this is a path-dependent phenomena (or “lock-in”) but Witzel seems to suggest that this is a symptom of entropic decay, which it is not.
Later on, he says friction is an “entropic force”. If he had said friction is a dissipation of energy leading to rise in entropy, I would have agreed. But Witzel’s interpretation is too loose and leads to wrong imagery.
Nevertheless, there are some good takeaways from the book. I particularly liked the chapter on Gresham’s Law which states that “bad money drives out good money”. This has been found to hold good through centuries of currency debasement. But I am not sure that I can always agree with his “corollary” that bad ideas can drive out good ideas.
To sum up, not a bad book for a one time reading, but definitely not a book that you want to dip into time and again.
While Witzel is sound in his management theories, he distorts his message by unnecessarily bringing in scientific notions such as entropy and evolution. He says: “[E]ntropy is a measure of the amount of energy that escapes from or is not available to a given process.” As a chemical engineer, I object to this oversimplification. The best way of characterizing entropy, following Boltzmann, is as a measure of disorder in a system.
Witzel also claims that “within a given system, entropy increases over time.” This is only true for an isolated system with no energy or mass exchanges. For a system with heat exchange, it is the free energy that minimizes over time.
Witzel confuses entropic decay (disorder) with path-dependence (or complexity). Entropy is a state function and is path-independent. However, in many places, Witzel equates entropy with path-dependence which is a feature of “emergent phenomena”. Witzel poses the question: “Why do we continue to use QWERTY keyboard even though we know it is not the most user-friendly?” I can understand that this is a path-dependent phenomena (or “lock-in”) but Witzel seems to suggest that this is a symptom of entropic decay, which it is not.
Later on, he says friction is an “entropic force”. If he had said friction is a dissipation of energy leading to rise in entropy, I would have agreed. But Witzel’s interpretation is too loose and leads to wrong imagery.
Nevertheless, there are some good takeaways from the book. I particularly liked the chapter on Gresham’s Law which states that “bad money drives out good money”. This has been found to hold good through centuries of currency debasement. But I am not sure that I can always agree with his “corollary” that bad ideas can drive out good ideas.
To sum up, not a bad book for a one time reading, but definitely not a book that you want to dip into time and again.
Nicely drafted, Sir!
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