[gfodor]

I agree this is definitely a great way to solve problems, it's one of hill climbing basically, where the tactics and strategy really need to be carefully managed since it's very easy to get the gradient or step size wrong.

Another way to see it is it's a form of de-risking an already risky endeavor. Anytime you reduce risk by adopting a methodology or formula that has known benefits, you're basically trading options (in the financial markets sense.) In this case, you're (probably) reducing downside risk, while increasing the odds of success, but at a cost of reducing the overall maximum upside, since your odds of creating a once-in-a-generation disruption goes down if you're using a hill climbing methodology to create wealth.