By George V. Hulme

Elegant solutions are both unusually simple and surprisingly powerful, says Matthew May, speaker and author, most recently of In Pursuit of Elegance: Why the Best Ideas Have Something Missing (Broadway Business, 2009). Yet not everything simple is elegant. Truly elegant solutions are notable for achieving the maximum impact with the minimum input.

Why is elegance — whether in cars, buildings or IT systems — so elusive? The question, May replies, has relevance for CIOs pursuing practical solutions to business problems — especially in an era in which business leaders in all disciplines are being asked to do more with less, maximizing their impact while minimizing outlay.

Elegant solutions also share four characteristics: symmetry, seduction, subtraction and sustainability.

Symmetry is all about structure, order and aesthetics, May says. To develop a symmetrical solution is to solve a problem the way nature does: First, we look for what's missing, then we fill in the obviously missing piece. Most of us are already adept at noticing a lack of symmetry. This skill can help us find a solution, even when we have only partial information.

Seduction is about creative engagement, capturing attention and activating the imagination. This is a crucial element of elegant business solutions. It is also a powerful way to rally people to a cause. Often seduction involves working with the unknown, the mysterious. "What isn't there drives us to resolve our curiosity," May says.

Subtraction means solving a problem economically. It also means working against human nature, since subtracting doesn't come easily to most. "MRIs have shown that the brain actually fires differently when people are doing the simple process of adding numbers, as compared to subtracting them," he says. "It's because we are born to add, collect, hoard and consume." The trick, then, is to understand what to eliminate — May's context means creating processes that are repeatable and lasting. To consistently build elegant solutions, the principles of symmetry, seduction and subtraction need to be applied in a way that is repeatable throughout the organization.

By way of an elegant example, May offers a fast-food chain, In-N-Out Burger of Irvine, Calif., that uses a "less is more" approach. The chain's menu offers only five items: a hamburger, cheeseburger, double burger, fries and a short list of drinks. That's subtraction, he says. But the restaurant also has a "secret" menu it shares only with regular customers. These special dishes are never listed on the regular menu, offering the restaurant a seemingly irresistible mystique. That's a stellar example of seduction, May says. As customers tell each other about the secret menu, the desire to "fill in the blanks" makes the restaurant's appeal that much more compelling.

For business IT leaders, elegance is more than just a nice-to-have. Elegance can actually be a decisive factor in driving business innovation and success. As CIOs know all too well, business processes can become over-complicated — and the impulse to keep adding is hard to overcome. "It's a challenge we all face in many of our efforts," he says. Perhaps that's why truly elegant and innovative solutions in business are so rare — and so valuable.

George V. Hulme pursues elegance from Minneapolis, where he is a business and technology writer.