Loonshots: How to Nurture the Crazy Ideas That Win Wars, Cure Diseases, and Transform Industries

Create project champions Fragile projects need strong hands. After Endo left Sankyo, for example, the company’s statin program withered and eventually collapsed. There was no one internally to investigate and answer False Fails, no one to protect the program from critics with other agendas who wanted its budget for their own programs. Endo was both

“No division, department, branch or group can be either ignored or favored at the expense of the others without unbalancing the whole.”

The physicist Richard Feynman once said, “Learn by trying to understand simple things in terms of other ideas—always honestly and directly.”

Thiel wrote Zuckerberg a check for $500,000. Eight years later, he sold most of his stake in Facebook for roughly a billion dollars. Thiel saw past the False Fail of Friendster, just as Endo saw past the False Fails of the statins and Folkman saw past the False Fails of his blood-vessel inhibitors.

When groups are small, for example, everyone’s stake in the outcome of the group project is high. At a small biotech, if the drug works, everyone will be a hero and a millionaire. If it fails, everyone will be looking for a job. The perks of rank—job titles or the increase in salary from being promoted—are small compared to those high stakes. As te

THE THREE DEATHS

A loonshot refers to an idea or project that most scientific or business leaders think won’t work, or if it does, it won’t matter (it won’t make money). It challenges conventional wisdom. Whether a change is “disruptive” or not, on the other hand, refers to the effects of an invention on a market.

Key to that dynamic equilibrium—and Bush’s ability to speak freely to generals—was support from the top. In the middle of managing a difficult conflict, Bush wrote, “I told FDR that he had handed me a hot potato, and I might have to bump some heads together. I remember well his answer. He said, ‘You go ahead and bump, and I will back you up.’”

In 1988, a fire in Yellowstone National Park burned 800,000 acres, 36 percent of the total park area—the largest fire in the park’s history. Analyzing park policy is where percolation theory first showed what it can do. Until 1972, Yellowstone policy required rangers to put out every small fire immediately, whether it was caused by humans (a carele