Originally Posted by
Campag4life
I come from the world of design. You have it backwards. Marketing doesn't drive design. Marketing doesn't exist without design. Design drives marketing.
One of the discussions often overlooked...I have a pretty heavy science background....about stiffness is...the argument goes on and on about stiffness. Is stiffer really faster? Is energy conserved or lost due to heat? Why isn't energy returned or is it?...etc etc. There is something lost in this conversation. Control. Stiffness begets control. Doubt that?
Towards the end of this podcast...they reach a bit of a similar conclusion. To sum up...their overall assessment of frame stiffness is it doesn't really matter that much, BUT some frames, for seemingly inexplicable reasons, ARE faster. And they were the more flexible frames. But only for certain people. They ran a test, where the only thing different between different runs was a different frame with a different level of flexibility. The bikes were indistinguishable from each other...they even swapped wheels.
They came to the conclusion that frame stiffness can have a similar effect to fit. It doesn't affect power transfer per se, but it DOES have an impact on the ability of some riders to generate power. Different people are suited to different levels of frame stiffness for maximal power generation.
My own takeaway from this? Nobody knows for sure what's going on, but it's something interesting. And if someone says they DO know exactly how stiffness affects power transfer and speed, they just don't know what they're talking about.
Specifically regarding control and stiffness....I'll defer to you. Don't have enough info to speak intelligently .