I enjoyed Safi Bahcalls Loonshots, is a great read for non-business types as well as business-type readers. The way Safi writes and shares the story to show his insights into physics into how we can innovate into various areas of the world.

This book was an okay read. I liked the premise and found reading about "loonshot" ideas very interesting. However it was much more technical, scientific and detail oriented than the description let on. I was hoping this book would be applicable to leadership and other creative spheres, but I felt it was much more oriented to tech and science spheres. I feel it would be a great book for someone in those interest fields - but not so much for me!

LOONSHOTS by biotechnology entrepreneur Safi Bahcall deals with "How to Nurture the Crazy Ideas That Win Wars, Cure Diseases, and Transform Industries." Bahcall writes about how small changes in structure can transform a team. Both in the book and in his March 2019 talk at SXSW he uses the example of combining a molecule of water either with a glass of water or with a block of ice – that same molecule will react differently in different circumstances. Hence, Bahcall advocates for applying the science of phase transitions, essentially crafting life at 32 degrees Fahrenheit, supporting innovators and doers equally, plus managing the transfer, not the technology. One chapter uses examples from new drug development to discuss the surprising fragility of loonshots and he quotes Nobel Prize winner Sir James Black as saying, "it's not a good drug unless it's been killed at least three times." Bahcall list several lessons: beware the false fail; create project champions, and LSC: listen to the suck with curiosity, noting "I find it's when I question the least that I need to worry the most." Other sections of his book stress the value of spreading a system mindset and draw on examples dealing with Edwin Land and Polaroid, with Xerox's PARC and even with James Bond or Star Wars films. Diagrams are interspersed and approximately a fourth of the book is devoted to appendices, notes and an index. The concluding section of LOONSHOTS poses an important question: "any large organization develop[s] deeply held beliefs, sometimes consciously, often not, about both strategies and products – and loonshots are contrarian bets that challenge those beliefs. Perhaps everything that you are sure is true about your products or your business model is right, and the people telling you about some crazy idea that challenges your beliefs are wrong. But what if they aren't? ... How much risk are you willing to take by dismissing their idea?"

Link in live post:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09vJK8Dgarc

Loonshots is enjoyable and interesting and unlike many other business books I had not read or heard of many of the shared stores. The author has the gift of taking complex ideas and making them understandable. The challenge with the book was two-fold. Each story is too long - I kept thinking "I get it" lets move on to the application of the concept. And that is the second area where I thought this book fell short. The application ideas were too short. As a recreational book I'd give it 4 stars. I didn't find it valuable as a business book.

Thank you to NetGalley for providing me an early release in exchange for an honest and fair review.

Loonshots deals with 'The Needham' question. Why did the renaissance happen in England and not elsewhere, even though there was similar talent in other parts of the world.
If you have done phase theory of things, then you'll find the transition easier to understand from underdogs to champions.
What does it take for an idea to be nurtured - the funding, but what are the investors most likely to go after. s-type and p-type loonshots.
Bahcall has a great way of making scientific things easier to undersand for the comon man - polaroid.
There are comparisions in many industries - Airline industry - American Airlines vs PanAm, what was the difference in their approach? How the movie industry and the science-pharma split when they got big. The rift between production and disruption. How many slip out in The scale Chasm.
I am very impressed with the huge section of Appendix.

"A compulsively readable chronicle (and rulebook) for breakthrough innovation"

You would imagine that the first time someone presented the idea of using an invisible beam to detect enemy ships and warplanes, or a drug to reduce cholesterol, or to kill tumors by choking their blood supply, there would be wild jubilation welcoming such a world-shaking breakthrough.
Aaaand you would be wrong. As a rule, the folks who came up with such painfully obvious innovations as radar, statins and anti-angiogenesis drugs were rejected, and again, and again. For up to 32 years.

Loonshots are “widely dismissed ideas whose champions are often written off as crazy.” Through dozens of engaging stories told with insight and wry humor, Bahcall describes how loonshots (such as radar, the internet, and Pixar movies) come about, how to nurture them, how to champion them, and how to keep from inadvertently killing them.

A gifted storyteller, Bahcall populates the narrative with characters endlessly fascinating because of their pluck, stubbornness, luck, or sheer genius: Vannevar Bush, the creator of the Office of Science Research and Development which basically won WW2; Akira Endo, the Japanese chemist who screened 6000 fungi to discover statins only to have his work stolen; Judah Folkman, the saintly discoverer of angiogenesis; Juan Terry Trippe, the larger-than-life founder of PanAm; Charles Lindbergh; Edwin Land, the supergenius founder of Polaroid; and Steve Jobs, who continues to get a lot more credit for Apple’s products than he deserved.

In each of these instances, Bahcall goes deep, uncovering the complexities that belie simplistic origin stories and hero worship (Jobs and Newton are notably knocked down a few notches). Bahcall has done some serious sleuthing here. He also has a flair for super-clear explanations of complex scientific subjects.

One of the book's central theses is that loonshots have their genesis in company *structure* and not culture. He draws a parallel from the science of phase transitions. To generate loonshots, you want fluidity: smaller teams with mostly creative folks (“artists”). To generate franchises, or even just to bring the loonshots to market, you want solidity: bigger teams staffed with “soldiers” with well-defined roles. Leading to the Loonshot Rules:
1. Separate the phases: Separate your artists and soldiers.
2. Dynamic equilibrium: Love your artists and soldiers equally.
3. Critical mass: Have a loonshot group large enough to ignite.

In the latter part of the book, Bahcall presents a plausible quantitative model for the various forces that incline team members towards loonshot vs franchise behavior, and how to tweak those variables to get the kind of company you want.

I found this book enjoyable and enlightening enough to have read it twice already. If you are an entrepreneur, scientist, artist, drug developer, military officer, or just a rabid fan of ideas with some of your own you’d like to make real, you should find out about P-type (product) loonshots vs S-type (strategy) loonshots; the Bush-Vail rules; systems mindset vs outcome mindset for doing postmortems; and the dreaded Moses trap. Also, why *does* the world speak English and not Chinese, when the Chinese invented printing and gunpowder hundreds of years before the West? With the word “loonshot” likely poised to become part of the vernacular in innovative circles, this is the book that puts you ahead of the curve. Consider it the most fun required reading you’ll ever do.
-- Ali Binazir, M.D., M.Phil., host of "The Ideaverse", author of The Tao of Dating: The Smart Woman's Guide to Being Absolutely Irresistible, the highest-rated dating book on Amazon, and Should I Go to Medical School?: An Irreverent Guide to the Pros and Cons of a Career in Medicine

Drawing on his deep background in consulting and biotech, Bahcall motivates the reader with little-known details of famous business stories to posit that enduring companies need to find the right equilibrium of "artists" and "soldiers". While the two main paths - product or strategy - sound very similar to other approaches (Christensen's view on innovation, for example). he argues that this classification is different - almost splitting hairs.

The story on statins, Pan Am, and Polaroid are clear standouts. While most readers of this genre is familiar with the broad stories mentioned in the book (Apple/Pixar etc..), some of the details are relatively new and underappreciated in previous books that have covered the topics.

While the authors informs and entertains with his fine examples, he squanders the attention by overly detailed descriptions of his analogy of "phase transitions" from chemistry. Yes, it is a clever example - but not worth repeating almost every chapter. In Part II, he almost gets carried away with extending this analogies and goes off tangential stories - seemingly trying to create a big picture-and-synthesize approach, but comes across too ambitious, scattered, and repetitive. The narrative style is similar to almost any book in this genre- popularized by Gladwell - 2-3 seemingly unrelated stories in each chapter , slowly developed, all leading to (hopefully) a key insight. The author also makes a very compelling case for analyzing wins, not just failures. In addition, the discussion on how to determine whether a failure is a verdict on the idea or the test itself, or the positioning is well worth it.

An executive managing an innovation portfolio is most likely to benefit from the examples and the business lessons; though anyone in managerial position will benefit from the case studies . Overall, a good read with some interesting insights and informative case studies.

Quite interesting combination of story, science and history. I can agree with the author that technology is not only driving business but also created new industries. Great examples in camera and photography. The interesting thing is that we never know which industry will be influenced next. The concept of loonshoot is interesting enough. I have learn many facts that I wasn't aware of in depth. Great job on this and this made my reading very engaging. For me the book represents a new approach in the philosophy of business and entrepreneurship.

I am reviewing this book for the May-June issue of Global Business and Organizational Excellence. Until then, I posted a note on my Goodreads account. I will send a pdf via email to Rebecca Lang, who provided me with a hard copy when I asked about the charts.