MinimumInventoryMaximumDiversity

ThoughtStorms Wiki

A minimum inventory/maximum diversity system is a kit of modular parts and rules of assembly that gives you maximal design bang for your design-component buck. It’s a system that achieves a wide variety of effects from a small variety of parts. Nature excels at this game: every one of the many millions of natural proteins is assembled from an inventory of just 20 amino acids. Snowflakes are all just arrangements of the humble water molecule, H2O.

http://blog.wolfram.com/2009/03/25/minimum-inventory-maximum-diversity/