Steve Jobs famously said, “Simplicity is the Ultimate Sophistication.”

No doubt, keep things simple if you can. However, the opposite can be equally useful.

I stumbled on this idea while chatting with a guest on a recent episode of the Management Blueprint podcast. We were talking about the perils of complexity when he turned the table on me by saying something like: “We don’t mind productive complexity, as it creates a natural barrier to entry in our business.”

It got me thinking about the Einstein quote: “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.”

What my podcast guest meant was that simplicity is important—but complexity should not be reduced beyond the point at which critical details or accuracy are sacrificed.

In Business, You Want Both Simplicity and Complexity

So really, I think we want both.

We want to master big problems that our competitors have not cracked. Then we want to streamline our solution so that…