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

In the last chapter, we saw how a tug-of-war between two opposing forces can trigger a phase transition. As the temperature of water falls, molecules vibrate more slowly until they reach a critical temperature, at which point their binding energy exceeds their entropy and they crystallize into the rigid order of ice. That’s the liquid-to-solid phas

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.’”

The solid-to-liquid transitions described above—both the marbles and real solids—fall within a category called symmetry-breaking transitions. A liquid has symmetry in the sense that, averaged over time, it looks the same from any angle. That’s called rotation symmetry. A solid does not: it “breaks” rotation symmetry. That’s because the view of a mo

Over the next 50 years, Vail’s organization—eventually called the Bell Telephone Laboratories—produced the transistor, the solar cell, the CCD chip (used inside every digital camera), the first continuously operating laser, the Unix operating system, the C programming language, and eight Nobel Prizes. Vail created the most successful industrial res

learned “how not to fight a war.” In the high-stakes competition between weapons and counterweapons, the weak link was not the supply of new ideas. It was the transfer of those ideas to the field. Transfer requires trust and respect on both sides. But officers “made it utterly clear that scientists or engineers employed in these laboratories were o

Until deregulation. Small changes that improved efficiency and lowered costs—not glamorous, kind of boring—suddenly became the key to survival. Those S-type loonshots, nurtured by startups like Southwest or major carriers like Bob Crandall’s American, spread quickly through the industry. They annihilated every unprepared airline. Pan Am began the s

LSC: Listen to the Suck with Curiosity On every setback or rejection I experience, which occurs often, I try to remind myself of a third lesson from the fragility of loonshots. It’s how Endo, Folkman, and Thiel got past False Fails. I think of it as Listening to the Suck with Curiosity (LSC)—overcoming the urge to defend and dismiss when attacked a

Bush’s new organization, eventually called the Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD), would create the opportunity Bush sought for scientists, engineers, and inventors at universities and private labs to explore the bizarre.

Moses Trap: When ideas advance only at the pleasure of a holy leader, who acts for love of loonshots rather than strength of strategy

Let’s call it the Moses Trap: When ideas advance only at the pleasure of a holy leader—rather than the balanced exchange of ideas and feedback between soldiers in the field and creatives at the bench selecting loonshots on merit—that is exactly when teams and companies get trapped. The leader raises his staff and parts the seas to make way for the