Consequences of the Redo Test

A task with a low Knowledge Cost Ratio (KCR) is by definition less robust to events that destroy all the results. The KCR decreases as the task is done more times, which decreases the robustness to unexpected loss. This gives a rationale for knowledge worker's reluctance for repetitive tasks. Since the KCR decreases with the task being done more times, we should expect that different people do the task later on. In the extreme case, the task gets automated. 

Some activities such as advertising and quality control are expensive and do not produce a physical product, which makes them superficially similar to knowledge work. However, they are not knowledge work according to the redo test.

Another consequence happens if you introduce procedure that requires artifacts from knowledge work to be saved, or else the work counts for naught. In that case, a lot of work may have to be redone unnecessarily.