In a blog written months ago, “Innovation with Ten Zero’s”,  I discussed the LHC (Large Hadron Accelerator) built at a cost of $9 b. near Geneva. The device uses supercooled magnets to accelerate protons and smash them together, to learn about the inner structure of atoms, much as you break an egg to see the white and yolk inside.

Last September LHC was turned on for the first time — and quickly shut down, because one of the magnets failed, owing to a wiring mistake. Turns out, according to the International Herald Tribune, that “the biggest most expensive physics machine in the world is riddled with thousands of bad electrical connections”. It could be years, if ever, the report notes, before the LHC is operating at full strength. As a result, some physicists are deserting the European project to work on smaller (but functioning) accelerators and colliders in the United States. 

A basic principle of economics says that resources should be allocated to maximize returns, by equating returns at the margin, and to minimize opportunity costs (the results that are sacrificed, when resources are not invested in them). What is the marginal return on that $9 b.? What wonderful things and experiments could have been done with those funds? What amazing results could have been achieved had the $9 b. been used to fund 1,000 expensive experiments, each costing $9 m.?  

In innovation, poverty is sometimes highly productive, forcing us to be ingenious and to conserve scarce resources. When the checkbook is infinitely large, all that ingenuity disappears. Moreover, did the LHC experts forget that great design (the design of the LHC is truly amazing) must be matched by equally great construction and quality control?  When operations is orders of magnitude worse than design, the result is frustration, waste, bugs and delays.  

Fewer zero’s. More quality. More discipline. These are the key lessons of the LHC saga.