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

by Safi Bahcall

That intangible can quickly become tangible. If your job is to partner with external peers to develop new ideas, and you are recognized by those peers as a strong manager, scientists or inventors or other creatives will want to work with you rather than your competitors. They will be more inclined to bring their next great loonshot to you rather than your competitor. That could make a very big difference to your career. And, of course, being well known and well regarded among peers creates the obvious benefit of future job offers. Partnerships reduce the return-on-politics in still another way. External peers are more likely to be impartial judges, not susceptible to politicking. That impartial view, of both successes and failures, is crucial for a strong system mindset, as discussed in chapter 5. Did a program fail because the underlying technology just didn’t work (hypothesis failure), or because the person running the project botched it up (operational failure)? Did a program succeed because the person did a terrific job, or did he make a bunch of critical mistakes and get lucky despite those mistakes? Fans watching a baseball game recognize the difference between a player who scores off a beautiful hit and a player who scores off a sure out that a fielder happened to let dribble through his legs. DARPA’s principles—elevated autonomy and visibility; a focus on the best external rather than internal ideas—won’t apply the same way to every company (most companies are not ...