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

by Safi Bahcall

When someone challenges the project you’ve invested years in, do you defend with anger or investigate with genuine curiosity? I find it’s when I question the least that I need to worry the most.

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 chosen loonshot. The dangerous virtuous cycle spins faster and faster: loonshot feeds franchise feeds bigger, faster, more. The all-powerful leader begins acting for love of loonshots rather than strength of strategy. And then the wheel turns one too many times.

For a loonshot nursery to flourish—inside either a company or an industry—three conditions must be met: 1. Phase separation: separate loonshot and franchise groups 2. Dynamic equilibrium: seamless exchange between the two groups 3. Critical mass: a loonshot group large enough to ignite

With a little help, and a little science, we can each press on, as individuals, as members of teams, as citizens of nations, toward our own endless frontiers.

Separate your artists and soldiers: Create separate groups for inventors and operators: those who may invent the next transistor vs. those who answer the phone; those who design radically new weapons vs. those who assemble planes. You can’t ask the same group to do both, just like you can’t ask water to be liquid and solid at the same time.

Make sure your loonshot nursery seeds both types of loonshots, especially the type you are least comfortable with. S-type loonshots are the small changes in strategy no one thinks will amount to much. P-type loonshots are technologies no one thinks will work.

• Listen to the Suck with Curiosity (LSC): When you have poured your soul into a project, you will be tempted to argue with critics and dismiss whoever challenges you. You will improve your odds of success by setting aside those urges and investigating, with genuine curiosity, the underlying reasons why an investor declines, a partner walks, or a customer chooses a competitor. It’s hard to hear no one likes your baby. It’s even harder to keep asking why.