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

by Safi Bahcall

Nobel laureate Phil Anderson once captured the core idea underlying the answers to these questions with the phrase more is different: “The whole becomes not only more than but very different from the sum of its parts.” He was describing not only the flow of liquids and the rigidity of solids but even more exotic behaviors of electrons in metals (for which he won his Nobel Prize).

Systems snap when the tide turns in a microscopic tug-of-war. Binding forces try to lock water molecules into rigid formation. Entropy, the tendency of systems to become more disordered, encourages those molecules to roam. As temperature decreases, binding forces get stronger and entropy forces get weaker.

As teams and companies grow larger, the stakes in outcome decrease while the perks of rank increase. When the two cross, the system snaps. Incentives begin encouraging behavior no one wants. Those same groups—with the same people—begin rejecting loonshots.

cf Stripe

Bush chose to maintain his ties with the Navy after the war. It forced him to learn a new skill: the ability to embrace others unlike himself, a skill that would later prove immensely valuable. Bush served in the naval reserves for eight years, even as his career as an academic, an engineer, and a businessman grew. He was appointed a professor of engineering at MIT, invented one of the earliest computers (an analog machine), and helped launch a company that grew into the massive electronics manufacturer Raytheon.

“You are about to land at dead of night in a rubber raft on a German-held coast. Your mission is to destroy a vital enemy wireless installation that is defended by armed guards, dogs, and searchlights. You can have with you any weapon you can imagine. Describe that weapon.”

Bush’s report, called Science: The Endless Frontier, presented to President Truman in June 1945, two months after FDR’s death, and released the following month, caused a sensation.

The report outlined the architecture of a new national research system. Within days of its publication, Bush’s report was hailed across the major news outlets. The New York Times, however, questioned its conclusions and patiently explained the nature of science to Bush (and his 41 MD and PhD coauthors): “The scientific method is always the same, whether it deals with radar or disease. Dr. Bush’s report ignores this fact.” The Times concluded by suggesting a better model: “Soviet Russia has approached this task more realistically.”