> But one problem remained: Fordlandia was not producing any rubber. Jungle foliage continued to be cleared, but efforts to plant rubber trees yielded discouraging results. The few trees that took root were quickly beset by blight.
This is too bad. With vision clearer in hindsight, it appears Ford should have taken a more "lean" approach in testing his means of production, perhaps at a smaller scale requiring fewer personnel and ultimately a smaller investment.
I am no botanist, so I'm unsure if they had the means of fighting blight at that time, but the presence of it would have made me question the resulting scalability (if density of plantings had to be reduced).
However, the foible seems understandable, given Ford's ambition and track record of solving problems.
This honestly makes me think of Musk -- huge actions/claims/successes/failures. The parallels, while probably all imaginary, work out quite well in my head.
While many of Musk's endeavors have huge claims/visions behind them, it seems to me that the people behind them are actually good at testing them in a smaller scale and relatively quickly getting to a point where they are generating money, instead of staying up in the ivory tower.
Take the Boring Company which after a couple of prototypes landed actual contracts. Working momentum is powerful, even if it takes several times as long as people hope it would from the onset.
Who knows, maybe they'll even end up with a hyperloop in twenty years.
I'm surprised that I haven't seen this analogy more often. There are a lot of parallels between what Tesla is trying to do and what Ford did in its early days.
This is too bad. With vision clearer in hindsight, it appears Ford should have taken a more "lean" approach in testing his means of production, perhaps at a smaller scale requiring fewer personnel and ultimately a smaller investment.
I am no botanist, so I'm unsure if they had the means of fighting blight at that time, but the presence of it would have made me question the resulting scalability (if density of plantings had to be reduced).
However, the foible seems understandable, given Ford's ambition and track record of solving problems.