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

critical mass, has to do with commitment. If there is no money to pay for hiring good people or funding early-stage ideas and projects, a loonshot group will wither, no matter how well designed. To thrive, a loonshot group needs a chain reaction. A research lab that produces a successful drug, a hit product, or award-winning designs will attract to

Taylor and Coughran understood about engineers what Catmull understood about film directors: creative talent responds best to feedback from other creative talent. Peers, rather than authority. Catmull designed a system for a group of peer film directors to regularly coalesce around a project and give its director advice—honest feedback from colleag

But franchises grow stale. Without fresh loonshots, the large Majors would disappear.

Easily measured, easily understood goals need to be carefully designed and agreed upon. Performance needs to be assessed fairly to avoid violent end-of-year arguments. Difficult messages need to be delivered with actionable suggestions, so an employee sees a clear path to greater rewards in the future. But the most difficult job in redesigning ince

Somewhere between simple one-person rewards and wasteful free-rider rewards given to everyone lies a valuable and critical sweet spot: rewarding teams for collective outcomes.

A loonshot refers to an idea or project that most scientific or business leaders think won’t work, or if it does, it won’t matter (it won’t make money). It challenges conventional wisdom. Whether a change is “disruptive” or not, on the other hand, refers to the effects of an invention on a market.

“Luck is the residue of design.”

A good incentives officer can also save money. He or she can identify wasteful bonuses (for example, the free-rider earnings bonus mentioned above) and tap into the power of nonfinancial rewards: peer recognition, reduced commute times, choice of assignments, freedom to work on a passion project, and so on.

why did some countries adopt those new ideas of science and industry faster than others? Haiti’s economy, for example, declined over much of the twentieth century. The per-capita GDP of the Dominican Republic grew fivefold over the same period. Yet they are two halves of the same island. History doesn’t allow proofs, but some explanations are not t