Ebook Loonshots How to Nurture the Crazy Ideas That Win Wars Cure Diseases and Transform Industries Safi Bahcall 9781250185969 Books
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*Wall Street Journal bestseller
*Next Big Idea Club selection―chosen by Malcolm Gladwell, Susan Cain, Dan Pink, and Adam Grant as one of the "two most groundbreaking new nonfiction reads of the season"
*Washington Post's "10 Leadership Books to Watch for in 2019"
*Inc.com's "10 Business Books You Need to Read in 2019"
*Business Insider's "14 Books Everyone Will Be Reading in 2019"
“This book has everything new ideas, bold insights, entertaining history and convincing analysis. Not to be missed by anyone who wants to understand how ideas change the world.†―Daniel Kahneman, winner of the Nobel Prize and author of Thinking, Fast and Slow
What do James Bond and Lipitor have in common? What can we learn about human nature and world history from a glass of water?
In Loonshots, physicist and entrepreneur Safi Bahcall reveals a surprising new way of thinking about the mysteries of group behavior that challenges everything we thought we knew about nurturing radical breakthroughs.
Drawing on the science of phase transitions, Bahcall shows why teams, companies, or any group with a mission will suddenly change from embracing wild new ideas to rigidly rejecting them, just as flowing water will suddenly change into brittle ice. Mountains of print have been written about culture. Loonshots identifies the small shifts in structure that control this transition, the same way that temperature controls the change from water to ice.
Using examples that range from the spread of fires in forests to the hunt for terrorists online, and stories of thieves and geniuses and kings, Bahcall shows how this new kind of science helps us understand the behavior of companies and the fate of empires. Loonshots distills these insights into lessons for creatives, entrepreneurs, and visionaries everywhere.
Over the past decade, researchers have been applying the tools and techniques of phase transitions to understand how birds flock, fish swim, brains work, people vote, criminals behave, ideas spread, diseases erupt, and ecosystems collapse. If twentieth-century science was shaped by the search for fundamental laws, like quantum mechanics and gravity, the twenty-first will be shaped by this new kind of science. Loonshots is the first to apply these tools to help all of us unlock our potential to create and nurture the crazy ideas that change the world.
Ebook Loonshots How to Nurture the Crazy Ideas That Win Wars Cure Diseases and Transform Industries Safi Bahcall 9781250185969 Books
"By now most of us have gotten past the tired old notion of a lone inventor or a brilliant marketer single-handedly creating the Next New Thing. Instead we focus on trying to create a culture in our organization that will enable great things to happen. But what we fail to see - and what Safi Bachall so ably and lucidly points out in this book, through richly entertaining historical examples with a dollop or two of basic physics thrown in - is that structure trumps culture when it comes to corporate creativity.
That's not to say that the people in an organization don't matter, only that there are ways of organizing teams for success, and ways of organizing that will ensure even the best and brightest are bound to fail.
Anyone who has experienced the rigid bureaucracy that emerges as companies or teams reach a certain size will immediately grasp Bachall's simple but brilliant use of phase transitions (e.g., from water to ice) as a metaphor for the structural transformation over time of organizations. Even better, he offers solid, helpful advice on how to keep things "on the edge," not too rigid, but not too loose, either - maintaining the dynamic equilibrium required to function as a cohesive unit while still allowing creative sparks to grow into roaring, "loonshot" infernos.
You don't need to be a physicist to understand his examples, but by drawing on real world, physical rules Bachall deftly shows how organizations behave in real life. And I guarantee you'll soon find yourself looking at your own organization and recognizing False Fails, the Moses Trap, the importance of franchises in supporting new breakthrough exploration (and all the ways they can also block the loonshot that might become the next franchise), as well as P-Type and S-Type loonshots.
My office wall is lined on one side with books about how great companies got that way. On the other side are books detailing the mistakes companies made that doomed them to failure. The kicker? The books on both sides are all about the *same* companies! As the grew and thrived they also slowly became prisoners of sclerotic organizational structures that stopped them from being creative. Loonshots shows how organizations can maintain the "dynamic equilibrium" required for continual success and reinvention.
Which I guess means I need to start a new bookshelf somewhere in the middle..."
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Tags : Loonshots How to Nurture the Crazy Ideas That Win Wars, Cure Diseases, and Transform Industries [Safi Bahcall] on . <b> *Wall Street Journal </i>bestseller</b> <b>*Next Big Idea Club selection―chosen by Malcolm Gladwell,Safi Bahcall,Loonshots How to Nurture the Crazy Ideas That Win Wars, Cure Diseases, and Transform Industries,St. Martin's Press,1250185963,Creative ability in business,Creative ability in business.,Entrepreneurship,Entrepreneurship.,Success in business,Success in business.,060201 St Martin Trade Non Fict Cr Yr,Applied Sciences,BUSINESS ECONOMICS / Organizational Behavior,BUSINESS ECONOMICS / Workplace Culture,Business Economics,Business Economics/Decision Making Problem Solving,Business Economics/Workplace Culture,Business/Economics,GENERAL,General Adult,How-to/Do-it-yourself,Non-Fiction,ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR IN BUSINESS,SCIENCE / Applied Sciences,United States,Workplace Culture,business innovation; business innovators; trailblazers; inventions; inventors; company culture; business team culture; business management; people management; develop business skills; personal development; creative entrepreneurship; effective business; effective teamwork; innovative teamwork; team behavior; team development; business development; creative culture; scientific development; design development; business case studies; science case studies; vannevar bush; compensation incentives; percolation theory
Loonshots How to Nurture the Crazy Ideas That Win Wars Cure Diseases and Transform Industries Safi Bahcall 9781250185969 Books Reviews :
Loonshots How to Nurture the Crazy Ideas That Win Wars Cure Diseases and Transform Industries Safi Bahcall 9781250185969 Books Reviews
- 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 (“artistsâ€). 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 , and Should I Go to Medical School? An Irreverent Guide to the Pros and Cons of a Career in Medicine - Loonshots is a thought-provoking blend of history, physics, and business which seeks to explain group decision-making about "loonshots". I am a social scientist so the idea of thinking about group behavior through the lens of phase transitions (think ice to water or water to ice) was fascinating to me. The real-world examples ranging from WWII to cancer research were interesting and I found the author's personal stories most compelling of all.
- I don't generally read books about business, but a friend recommended this to me, and I'm glad I gave it a try. Bahcall immediately sets the stakes high with a story about the aspirations and tragedies of cancer research, and asks the question, How can we innovate better?
His answer is compelling and full of fascinating, entertaining stories about people who've dared to move into unknown territory. Bahcall creates vivid portraits of these people, and weaves their innovations into thrilling stores. It was astonishing to see an insight from physics applied to human endeavor in such an illuminating and convincing way. I wouldn't have thought that reading about business and physics could be this fun, funny - and moving.
The last chapter alone - Why the World Speaks English, in which Bahcall uses his model to explain why the scientific revolution happened in the west - is worth the price of admission. But you'll want to read the whole book. - By now most of us have gotten past the tired old notion of a lone inventor or a brilliant marketer single-handedly creating the Next New Thing. Instead we focus on trying to create a culture in our organization that will enable great things to happen. But what we fail to see - and what Safi Bachall so ably and lucidly points out in this book, through richly entertaining historical examples with a dollop or two of basic physics thrown in - is that structure trumps culture when it comes to corporate creativity.
That's not to say that the people in an organization don't matter, only that there are ways of organizing teams for success, and ways of organizing that will ensure even the best and brightest are bound to fail.
Anyone who has experienced the rigid bureaucracy that emerges as companies or teams reach a certain size will immediately grasp Bachall's simple but brilliant use of phase transitions (e.g., from water to ice) as a metaphor for the structural transformation over time of organizations. Even better, he offers solid, helpful advice on how to keep things "on the edge," not too rigid, but not too loose, either - maintaining the dynamic equilibrium required to function as a cohesive unit while still allowing creative sparks to grow into roaring, "loonshot" infernos.
You don't need to be a physicist to understand his examples, but by drawing on real world, physical rules Bachall deftly shows how organizations behave in real life. And I guarantee you'll soon find yourself looking at your own organization and recognizing False Fails, the Moses Trap, the importance of franchises in supporting new breakthrough exploration (and all the ways they can also block the loonshot that might become the next franchise), as well as P-Type and S-Type loonshots.
My office wall is lined on one side with books about how great companies got that way. On the other side are books detailing the mistakes companies made that doomed them to failure. The kicker? The books on both sides are all about the *same* companies! As the grew and thrived they also slowly became prisoners of sclerotic organizational structures that stopped them from being creative. Loonshots shows how organizations can maintain the "dynamic equilibrium" required for continual success and reinvention.
Which I guess means I need to start a new bookshelf somewhere in the middle...
