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

What do James Bond and Lipitor have in common? What can we learn about human nature and world history from a glass of water?

In Loonshots, our guest reveals a surprising new way of thinking about the mysteries of group behaviour that challenges everything we thought we knew about nurturing radical breakthroughs.

Drawing on the science of phase transitions, our guest tells us why teams, companies, or any group with a mission will suddenly change from embracing wild new ideas to rigidly rejecting them, just as flowing water will suddenly change into brittle ice. Mountains of print have been written about culture. Loonshots identifies the small shifts in structure that control this transition, the same way that temperature controls the change from water to ice.

Using examples that range from the spread of fires in forests to the hunt for terrorists online, and stories of thieves and geniuses and kings, our guest shows how this new kind of science helps us understand the behaviour of companies and the fate of empires. 

Loonshots distils these insights into lessons for creatives, entrepreneurs, and visionaries everywhere.

We welcome scientist, entrepreneur and author of Loonshots: How to Nurture the Crazy Ideas That Win Wars, Cure Diseases, and Transform Industries Safi Bahcall

We talk:

What is a Loonshot?

How structure is as important as culture

Phase transitions

How Innovation saves Empires

Why Innovation gets rejected

The rejection of radar before the War

The rejection of lifesaving drugs

The three deaths (fails)

Listening to the Suck with Curiosity

Understanding Failure

Avoiding the Moses Trap

Loving Soldiers and Artists

Managing the tension of the emergent and the established

How Steve Jobs learned to love Artists and Soldiers

The genius of Richard Miller, Judah Folkman, Vannevar Bush, Theodore Vail, Sir James Black, Akira Endo, Deak Parsons, Leo Young, Lawrence Hyland and Steve Jobs.

More about Safi here:

www.loonshots.com

www.bahcall.com