Depends on which way you look at. I wrote the article from the perspective of a founder, not an investor. The math analogy is a bit stretched though. Following it, the only thing that matters is where you start. If you started in the hill leading up to the global maximum you'd be good. I have no statistics to back this up, but I would suspect reaching a global maximum is more expensive than reaching a local one. Truly world-changing ideas, therefore, don't lend themselves as well to the lean methodology.