Applying optimization algorithms to profits
As a technology company, we like to apply technical solutions to problems at all levels. Our board of directors even apply technical solutions to the problem of company direction. Business can be thought of as an optimization algorithm: tweaking stuff and things in order to maximize company profits. Interestingly, we use a number of different kinds of optimization algorithm when dictating the direction of the company. We begin new product lines based on experience but continue to optimize our products based on customer feedback, trying to solve the problems that are most important to our customers. For example, our F# for Numerics library started life as our second attempt at selling libraries to F# users (our first attempt was F# for Visualization ) and we provided the features we thought would be most useful. Customers inevitably requested more features including both technical features like parallel matrix inversion with arbitrary-precision rational arithmetic but also non-technica...