"Friction isn't entropy. Friction is margin."
THE INVISIBLE ECONOMY
Every organization has friction. Delays between departments. Handoffs that lose information. Approvals that add weeks. Complexity that requires specialists to navigate.
The standard assumption: this is waste. Inefficiency. Something to eliminate.
The reality: every point of friction is someone's revenue stream.
That approval layer? It employs a department. That integration challenge? It justifies a team. That knowledge silo? It protects a career. The complexity that slows you down is the same complexity that funds someone's paycheck.
THE GAP ECONOMY
Healthcare Prior Authorization
$1.3 billion industry. Grew 30% in one year. Revenue comes from the delay itself, not from resolving it.
Enterprise Software Implementation
Products designed to require consultants. Complexity isn't a flaw. It's the billing mechanism.
Recruiting Industry
15-25% of first-year salary as fee. Value comes from information asymmetry, connecting known to unknown.
Hospital Administration
$687 billion on administration vs $346 billion on direct care. 2:1 ratio of paperwork to treatment.
THE GAP IS THE PRODUCT
In particle state organizations (GPI 7-10), friction isn't accidental. It's structural.
Consider what happens when you try to eliminate friction:
Propose removing an approval step
The approvers fight it. Their authority is the friction.
Suggest automating a manual process
The process owners resist. Their jobs are the friction.
Try to share siloed knowledge
The experts block it. Their scarcity is the friction.
Attempt to simplify a complex system
The vendors fight it. Their consultants bill the friction.
This isn't conspiracy. It's economics. People rationally defend revenue sources, even when those sources are organizational drag.
THE VENDOR ECOSYSTEM
Outside your organization, an entire industry profits from your friction.
Enterprise software that requires consultants to implement? That's not poor design. It's the business model. The implementation complexity generates more revenue than the software license.
Consulting firms that "fix" broken processes? They have no incentive to fix them permanently. A solved problem is a lost client. Chronic dysfunction is recurring revenue.
"Why would vendors fix problems that are their revenue stream?"
The average enterprise uses 371 applications. 51% of SaaS licenses go unused. Each integration point is friction. Each friction point is billable.
GPI DIMENSION: STRUCTURAL LOCK-IN
The Structural Lock-In dimension measures how much your infrastructure dictates your strategy. High lock-in (scores 8-10) means friction is literally built into your systems.
LOCK-IN CREATES FRICTION MARGIN
CLARITY IS VIOLENCE
This explains why attempts to measure and expose friction meet such resistance.
Clarity is violence to people whose power depends on ambiguity.
When you measure Decision Latency and expose that decisions take 6 weeks when they could take 6 hours, you're threatening the approval chain's relevance. When you map Knowledge Location and show that information is hoarded rather than shared, you're threatening gatekeepers' power. When you calculate the cost of Structural Lock-In, you're threatening vendors' contracts.
GPI doesn't just measure friction. It exposes margin. That's what makes it dangerous to particle state defenders.
THE FIELD STATE ALTERNATIVE
In field state (GPI 1-3), friction is treated as waste, not margin.
Energy flows freely. Decisions happen at the edge. Knowledge finds problems. The coordination infrastructure enables rather than extracts.
The difference isn't ideology. It's economics. Field state organizations make money by reducing friction for users, not by monetizing friction against them.
KEY INSIGHT
The gap is the product. The delay is the margin. The complexity is the business model. Until you understand friction economics, you can't overcome them. The first step is measuring who profits from your particle state.