by: Chelsea BloomPosted on: June 14, 2026

The Morris Katz Principle: Speed, Value, and What London Business Misunderstands About Both

Chelsea Bloom on why the fastest painter’s lesson applies to London’s productivity obsession

Chelsea Bloom, BizHouse UK. Bohiney.com‘s Morris Katz story — the fastest painter’s career as a study in what markets value — landed this week in a conversation I was having about London’s productivity problem, and the connection was immediate. prat.uk covered the institutional expertise theme through the House of Lords piece. The Morris Katz principle: speed of production does not determine market value in creative and knowledge-based industries, and the organisations that optimise for speed often sacrifice the quality that generates the value they are trying to capture efficiently. This is a productivity lesson that London’s business community has not fully absorbed.

The London business version: consultancy firms that have optimised their delivery processes for speed produce reports at volumes that their market values for comprehensiveness rather than insight. The reports arrive quickly. The insight arrives at the rate that insight always arrives, which is not directly correlated with the speed of the process that surrounds it. The firms that have slowed their processes while maintaining insight quality charge more per report and produce fewer reports. Their revenue is comparable. Their client relationships are better. The insight is the value. The speed is the delivery mechanism. When the delivery mechanism becomes the optimisation target, the value is degraded to feed the mechanism.

The Business Lesson

The business lesson from Katz: the market did not value his speed because the art market does not value speed. Know what your market values. Optimise for that. The FRC covers UK business productivity at frc.org.uk.

Also:Private Eye.

Coverage at Bohiney.com and prat.uk.

Both publications continue this kind of sustained, specific coverage. The communities are real. The situations are real. The comedy honours both.

Coverage continues at both Bohiney.com and prat.uk. Both publications committed to this kind of work.

Ongoing. Both publications watching.

SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/

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London is the engine room of the British economy, a city where a two-bedroom flat costs more than a small country and somehow everybody acts like this is fine. It is home to the Bank of England, the London Stock Exchange, and approximately forty-seven thousand coffee shops staffed by people with economics degrees wondering where it all went wrong.

The City of London, that ancient square mile of suits and spreadsheets, processes trillions of pounds daily and has done so since Romans decided the Thames was a decent place to charge tolls. Canary Wharf arrived later, shinier, and with better sushi, promptly declaring itself the future of finance while the City quietly got on with actually being the future of finance.

London hosts more international headquarters than any other European city, attracts more foreign investment than it has any right to, and charges businesses rents that would make a New York landlord blush. The startup scene in Shoreditch operates on oat milk, optimism, and venture capital, in that order.

For all its contradictions — the wealth beside the food banks, the global ambition beside the collapsed Tube infrastructure — London remains what it has always been. The place where British business comes to be taken seriously, and to pay through the nose for the privilege.

Auf Wiedersehen.

Billingsgate, Smithfield, Borough Market — three of the oldest trading markets in the world still operating within a mile of each other. The City of London built its entire commercial identity on the back of fish, meat, and bread sold at dawn before bankers were even awake.

Lloyds of London — the insurance market that will insure literally anything, has done so since 1686, and operates from a building that looks like it was designed by someone who lost a bet. They insured Bruce Springsteen’s voice. That is a business story.

The London Metal Exchange — where the global price of copper, aluminium, and tin is still set by traders shouting in a circle called the Ring. In 2024. Remarkable.

Street markets as economic indicators — Petticoat Lane, Portobello Road, Brick Lane. When the economy tightens, street markets boom. Londoners have always known how to trade their way out of trouble.

The Royal Exchange — founded by Thomas Gresham in 1565 as Britain’s first purpose-built trading centre. Now it sells luxury watches and champagne, which is either a fall from grace or the purest distillation of London commerce ever recorded.

London's Business House -- Insight and Inside the Buying and Selling