Rlet’s face it: the cult of performance has been the driving force behind immense technological, human and social progress in recent centuries. Today it is everywhere, omnipresent, unsurpassable. Alas, it also leads us (and quickly!) into the wall, that of physical planetary limits. The current CO concentration2 atmospheric (415 ppm) takes us back 800,000 years; the known reserves of phosphate rock, essential for food production, could be exhausted as early as 2040…
The contemporary obsession with optimizing a few quantitative variables (GDP, yields, etc.) has gradually condemned us to destroying the other, less quantifiable variables derived from living organisms. And it places us (society, business, individual) in a condition of extreme fragility and non-adaptability, while systemic crises (climatic, social, etc.) are multiplying.
It is urgent to undertake a major reversal: to replace the cult of performance with that of robustness, and therefore of an assumed dose of inefficiency. It’s about no longer aiming for the maximum, or even the optimum, but to be below the optimum in order to be able to cope with unforeseen events. Sub-optimality, one of the pillars of regenerative economics, is not a dirty word. On the contrary.
Toughness operationalizes durability
The living, all around us, is incredibly inefficient, and permanently. Let’s take two examples: photosynthesis? If it had been invented in a factory, it would have caused its immediate bankruptcy, by today’s market standards. The leaves capture 100% of the sun’s light radiation, but the efficiency of photosynthesis is most often less than 1%. This is what allows plants to manage light variations. If the efficiency of photosynthesis was optimal, the plants would burn in the event of a high fluctuation.
The same goes for body temperature, 37°C, very far from the optimum for enzymes at 40°C, which allows our body to keep a lot of leeway in the event of an infection. Applying this new paradigm to our daily lives can change everything. Robustness makes sustainability operational: it nourishes the adaptability of our companies and the autonomy of the territories.
Today, logistics chains are still being optimized in just-in-time conditions – a cargo ship askew in the Suez Canal… and everything comes to a standstill! What if we favor stocks, the diversity of suppliers and the resources of the local territory, close to consumers? Today, the versions of electronic products are always more efficient, with always more functionalities. What if we favored the ability of a product to be repairable, with modular parts, and available locally?
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