Artful Making: What Managers Need to Know About How Artists Work

us more rapidly and cheaply reconfigure systems and explore

many possibilities without incurring high costs.

Reducing Reconfiguration Costs:

Software Development

In the early days of computing, writing programs (creating

instructions for the machine to follow) was arduous. Often it

involved setting a series of switches over and over again, each

setting providing a small part of the program’s instructions. It

was not uncommon for a simple program to require tens of

thousands of settings, which had to be applied without making

a mistake or accidentally shutting off the power to the com-

puter.

1

Only after these instructions were complete could the

computer ...