Think Like a Rocket Scientist: Simple Strategies for Giant Leaps in Work and Life

Testing can help turn unknowns into knowns.

I’ve always appreciated authors who explain their points simply, right up front. So here’s the argument in brief: 1. The most important breakthroughs come from loonshots, widely dismissed ideas whose champions are often written off as crazy. 2. Large groups of people are needed to translate those breakthroughs into technologies that win wars, produ

Our ability to make the most out of uncertainty is what creates the most potential value. We should be fueled not by a desire for a quick catharsis but by intrigue. Where certainty ends, progress begins. Our obsession with certainty has another side effect. It distorts our vision through a set of funhouse mirrors called unknown knowns.

We’re inevitably influenced by what we know and the beaten-down paths walked by the pioneers before us. Escaping our own assumptions is tricky business—particularly when they’re invisible to us.