Tradition Doesn't Scale Very Well

Back in July David Segal with the New York Times wrote a great article about Italy and it's tradition - which appears to be getting in the way of growing its stagnant economy.

His article features clothier Luciano Barbera's factory where high-end clothing is made for the likes of Barney's and Neiman Marcus.  Mr. Barbera's process includes a step which allows for "the nobilization of the fabric."

'Nobilization' doesn't sound like a scalable process - or an efficient one to me.

I'm not going to recap the entire article, you can read it here (and view the accompanying slideshow).