Dido's Theorem

In times of cost-cutting, lay-offs and dramatic reductions, people sometimes huddle together for comfort in corporate workshops. There is a simple little workshop exercise about how to do more with less that goes something like this:

Divide people into groups of roughly six and equip each group with a single sheet of flipchart paper and a pair of scissors. Read them the riot act about using the scissors safely (particularly if they are adults) and assure them that the exercise has an eventual relevance and purpose. Ask each group to put the sheet of paper on the floor and stand on it. This produces a certain immediate intimacy to the exercise. Then ask one person in each group to use the scissors to cut the paper in half, dispose of one half, put the remaining half a sheet back on the floor and re-occupy the paper this time with at least one foot of every member of the group in contact with the paper. This is distinctly awkward and beginning to resemble that grimly cheerful 1970's party game, Twister. Now repeat the process and ask the scissorhands to cut the paper in half again and fit everybody onto what amounts to 25% of the original area. And repeat if necessary until general chaos prevails.

At about this point in the exercise, at least one group of participants will become sufficiently uncomfortable so as to come up with a different solution. In doing so, they are drawing inspiration, often unwittingly, from Dido, fabled and fabulous Phoenician Queen of Carthage. The foundation myth of ancient Carthage has it that Dido arrived battered and bedraggled on what is now the Tunisian coast of the Mediterranean seeking refuge from her vengeful family in Tyre. She asked her surprised hosts whether she could occupy a small plot of their bountiful land. 'How small?' they asked, guardedly. 'Oh, no more than I could cover with a single ox-hide,' fluttered Dido playing the grateful refugee. 'Go ahead,' they invited her graciously, no doubt picturing a tidy, temporary refugee encampment, whereupon Dido instructed her robber band to cut the ox-hide into the thinnest of strips and lay them end to end thereby encircling an area the size of the small and highly prosperous city-state of Carthage.

Which is much the same solution that my workshop participants enjoy finding for themselves. The need for ingenuity, a creative response to discomfort and a different way of thinking about dwindling resources and spatial relationships is easily linked to this otherwise innocent party game.

Sometimes less is more and not just isoperimetrically.