Eric Kandel won a Nobel Prize for his work on the neurological bases of memory. To make meaningful progress on any complex problem, he advises a two-stage approach. First, narrow your focus to a specific aspect of the problem on which you see a path to progress. In his case, this was the discovery that systems of neurons—not the properties of certain types of cells—were responsible for holding short- and long-term memories in the human brain.Second, apply a “reductionist approach”—studying the problem with a model or in some more rudimentary form that isolates and simplifies it. For Kandel, this meant looking at the nerve systems of a kind of sea slug. For you and your organization, it might mean anything from examining smaller-scale case studies, to doing a “beta test”, to creating a working computer model.In TheoryReductionism allows you to focus intensely on one component of a complex problem or to focus on one system in which that component is prominent or easy to study.R...