The 98/2 Rule: Why Boring Work Wins

Forget flashy innovations, true progress comes from the mundane

Silicon Valley’s secret sauce isn’t corporate labs or sexy startups.

The most transformative technologies often emerge from the fringes. Chris Dixon calls these “outside-in” innovations.¹

Born from garages, dorm rooms, and hobbyist meetups there’s nothing sexy about these technologies in the beginning.

Unlike their “inside-out” counterparts from Big Tech, these ideas start out scrappy and weird. Only the nerds geek out, because every tech nerd wants to feel like they’re living in the future (myself included).

The people building technologies on the edges have an advantage others in the “inside” don’t. They don’t care about flashy things.

Focus on the 98/2

You’re probably familiar with the Pareto Principle. The idea is often transferred to many different scenarios where 80% of something is caused by 20% of the total.

The Dutcher Principle, or the 98/2 rule, has more impact on your daily life.

The idea was coined by Stephen Dutcher who works in IT. He noticed extraordinary resources were being directed to resolve an error that was happening 2% of the time.