Beautiful story, but when think about the details it may misleading.

If the only object or the judgment criteria of the quantity way is quantity, and without any deliberate practice (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Practice_(learning_method)#Deli...) why the students finally not just only develop a way to produce high quantity product?

It's not the same way MacCready solve Henry Kremer's problem (http://www.azarask.in/blog/post/the-wrong-problem/), although looks similar.