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A review by jpmaguire2
Loonshots: How to Nurture the Crazy Ideas That Win Wars, Cure Diseases, and Transform Industries by Safi Bahcall
3.0
Bahcall explores the characteristics of organizations that foster great ideas. He attempts to synthesize their similarities into a coherent picture of what makes a place prone to generate and deliver big new ideas like the transistor, the jet engine, and new cancer treatments.
Unfortunately Bahcall relies primarily on anecdotes to make his cases. And many of them seem to suffer from confirmation bias. The book lacks strong arguments based on science and large datasets or organizations. While there are some nice robust findings brought up (the idea of organization efficiency and size), most of the book fails to defend it's claims about how to foster loonshots.
What remains is an exploration of a bunch of interesting stories about innovation from the past two millennia arguing for the balance of "soldiers [workers who produce proven products effectively]" and "artists [engineers and designers who think big and aren't afraid to make mistakes]" and those that can 'connect the two.' Unfortunately Mr. Bahcall fails to give practical steps companies can take to foster loonshoots and continuing speaks in ambiguous, non-practical language when making his case for organization structure design. I'd skip this one.
Unfortunately Bahcall relies primarily on anecdotes to make his cases. And many of them seem to suffer from confirmation bias. The book lacks strong arguments based on science and large datasets or organizations. While there are some nice robust findings brought up (the idea of organization efficiency and size), most of the book fails to defend it's claims about how to foster loonshots.
What remains is an exploration of a bunch of interesting stories about innovation from the past two millennia arguing for the balance of "soldiers [workers who produce proven products effectively]" and "artists [engineers and designers who think big and aren't afraid to make mistakes]" and those that can 'connect the two.' Unfortunately Mr. Bahcall fails to give practical steps companies can take to foster loonshoots and continuing speaks in ambiguous, non-practical language when making his case for organization structure design. I'd skip this one.