"An elephant carcass, with its tons of meat and marrow, has no value to a starving man with only his fingertips for tools. For our species to survive, each step of playful discovery had to be followed by a step of purposeful innovation-using new knowledge to create value." 


Economic theory is still evolving, and economics should not be studied from the standpoint that Markist economies are any better than Kensian, and vice versa. Rather than being studied from the fixed Newtonian Paradigm, which suggest that the all the laws of economics are known, economics must be studied with an evolving paradigm similar to biology, which measures economics based on fixed data and the constant of unknown future variable data. 


The variable data is the unknown information that must be solved in order to move the OLC on to the next Critical Task. In the Train example, the Fixed Data would be the route we are taking, the stops along the way that we already know we must travel to, the variable data would be the information concerned with how much coal to burn, what the weather may be like, and how to solve both expected and unexpected problems.


It is at the stage of the Variable Task where an OLC is prevented from being fulfilled. If you can solve the problem required to move the OLC on to the next task, you have not only solved the problem and found a way to continue existing, but most importantly you have evolved your business or your organism over your competitor. Not until your competitor has come across the same problem will they either figure out a way to adapt or cease to exist. The more problems or “opportunities” you encounter, the more chances you have to create a solution. 


Without CTM, one employee may find a way to solve the problem, but unless they share the information with the rest of the organism, it simply will continue to exist. CTM makes sure that every Variable Task that encounters a problem has the solution recorded and then checks it into the Solution Library for the next time someone faces it. 


Without the Variable Task, and without encountering problems, there would be no need for a Solution Library. However the more information in the Solution Library, the more resources an organism has to solve its problems and move on to the next stage of the OLC. This is where the name OLC came from. Notice, it's not Problem Life Cycle. It is  Opportunity Life Cycle , because variable task solutions generate a Solution Library, which evolve the organism and thus create more time to focus on the growth of the organism, rather than just keeping it alive.