 Which idea irritates you because it has not been taken far enough?
patio11: I think all of the test & measure stuff we talk about so much in the web context -- A/B testing, analytics, etc -- would revolutionize the world if it were applied with one tenth the dedication by human institutions which are not teeny little web startups.This isn't to say that we have the patent on The Scientific Method.  However, there are darn few organizations which seem to have it written into their DNA.  Toyota does, famously.  Imagine what would happen if your typical big-city school system did.  ("First order of business: we had 37 A/B tests running in first grade classrooms last week.  31 of them did not lead to substantial results.  Let's hear from our lead statistician about one promising innovation, which improved vocabulary retention among our lowest performing quartile of black students by 15%...")