Loonshots

You would imagine that the first time someone presented the idea of using an invisible beam to detect ships and airplanes, or a drug to reduce cholesterol, or to kill tumors by choking their blood supply, there would be wild jubilation welcoming such a world-shaking breakthrough.Aaaand you would be wrong. As a rule, the folks who came up with such painfully obvious innovations as radar, statins and anti-angiogenesis drugs were rejected, and again, and again. For up to 32 years.Loonshots are “widely dismissed ideas whose champions are often written off as crazy.” Through dozens of engaging stories told with insight and wry humor, Bahcall describes how loonshots (such as radar, the internet, and Pixar movies) come about, how to nurture them, how to champion them, and how to keep from inadvertently killing them.A gifted storyteller, Bahcall populates the narrative with characters endlessly fascinating because of their pluck, stubbornness, luck, or sheer genius: Vannevar Bush, the creator of the Office of Science Research and Development which basically won WW2; Akira Endo, the Japanese chemist who screened 6000 fungi to discover statins only to have his work stolen; Judah Folkman, the saintly discoverer of angiogenesis; Juan Terry Trippe, the larger-than-life founder of PanAm; Charles Lindbergh; Edwin Land, the supergenius founder of Polaroid; and Steve Jobs, who continues to get a lot more credit for Apple’s products than he deserved.In each of these instances, Bahcall goes deep, uncovering the complexities that belie simplistic origin stories and hero worship (Jobs and Newton are notably knocked down a few notches). Bahcall has done some serious sleuthing here. He also has a flair for super-clear explanations of complex scientific subjects.One of the book's central theses is that loonshots have their genesis in company *structure* and not culture. He draws a parallel from the science of phase transitions. To generate loonshots, you want fluidity: smaller teams with mostly creative folks (“artists”). To generate franchises, or even just to bring the loonshots to market, you want solidity: bigger teams staffed with “soldiers” with well-defined roles. Leading to the Loonshot Rules:1. Separate the phases: Separate your artists and soldiers.2. Dynamic equilibrium: Love your artists and soldiers equally.3. Critical mass: Have a loonshot group large enough to ignite.In the latter part of the book, Bahcall presents a plausible quantitative model for the various forces that incline team members towards loonshot vs franchise behavior, and how to tweak those variables to get the kind of company you want.I found this book enjoyable and enlightening enough to have read it twice already. If you are an entrepreneur, scientist, artist, drug developer, military officer, or just a rabid fan of ideas with some of your own you’d like to make real, you should find out about P-type (product) loonshots vs S-type (strategy) loonshots; the Bush-Vail rules; systems mindset vs outcome mindset for doing postmortems; and the dreaded Moses trap. Also, why *does* the world speak English and not Chinese, when the Chinese invented printing and gunpowder hundreds of years before the West? With the word “loonshot” likely poised to become part of the vernacular in innovative circles, this is the book that puts you ahead of the curve. Consider it the most fun required reading you’ll ever do.-- Ali Binazir, M.D., M.Phil., host of "The Ideaverse", author of The Tao of Dating: The Smart Woman's Guide to Being Absolutely Irresistible, the highest-rated dating book on Amazon, and Should I Go to Medical School?: An Irreverent Guide to the Pros and Cons of a Career in Medicine

As a former consultant, I get stupidly excited about books with 2x2 matrices and Loonshots was no exception. Alas, Bahcall commits two unforced errors in his usage of this most sacred tool: long words as X/Y axes labels AND having two items (instead of the canonical one) in one of the four boxes. The horror!!!In all seriousness though, Loonshots is a pretty compelling read about managing the tension between nurturing high risk, “crazy” projects and offering due respect to the steady part of a business, as well as ensuring adequate collaboration between those two areas of a company. Not only do the ideas make sense as described, but what makes this book particularly enjoyable is the handful of examples of this theory in action - all presented in a new light.There are a couple of things to complain about besides the matrix comment above (which is only part joke - the labels were indeed confusing the first time I encountered the matrix in the book). First and foremost, the book itself goes somewhat against Bahcall’s own advice to “love your artists and soldiers equally,” aka show equal appreciation to both the ones doing the high risk experimentation as well as the ones leading the steady business lines. The book is an ode to the artists, as their adventures get considerably more airtime. Undoubtedly the artist’s journey is more interesting, but it’s important for an overall balanced argument to show the work of the steady hand as well. Second, Bahcall’s approach towards figuring out the ideal team size in a business is unnecessarily “scientific.” The content on that topic stands well enough on its own without forcing an equation on it.Despite those two issues, count me as a fan, though - an easy, well-researched read that could spark a few interesting experiments in the corporate world.

I loved this book. It triggered several paradigm shifts for me. It was recommended to me by a scientist friend, and boy does it point out the obvious brilliance around us, if only we are willing to see it.

Gracias

One of the best books I ever readed, but defenely my favorite.Safi explore inovation process so easly that makes you desire stand up and start a startup immediataly.Not a short book, but a very good one.

Good book

This book was fascinating to read. Bahcall does away with vague notions of culture to emphasize that which can be explicitly controlled: organizational STRUCTURE. Filled with fascinating case studies ranging from the worlds of biotech drugs, to Hollywood, to the struggle for dominance between nations.I particularly loved how the author brings in scientific principles, mostly from physics, to explain behavioural changes within companies. This book will change the way you think about how to structure your organization such that you give yourself the best possible chance to create innovative breakthroughs.

Libro entretenidísimo y muy instructivo para tener una visión de la empresa más focalizada al desarollo.