Long ago I worked as an analyst on Wall Street. The first company that I analyzed was Federal Express, which at the time had not yet shipped its first package.
The idea behind FedEx was simple and compelling: The cost of complexity was higher than the cost of air transport, so the company would ship all its packages overnight to Memphis, Tennessee.
By radically simplifying the myriad combinations of start and end points — the only routes were to and from Memphis — all of the packages could be delivered the next day reliably.
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