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The Quiet Protagonist

Review of Safi Bahcall's "Loonshots"


This was by far one of the most thought-provoking and well-crafted, readable non-fiction book I have read in a long time. In fact, the author indicates early on that he has always wanted to write a book that does not digress from the bigger picture, especially those key messages that should stay with the reader long after the book is read and shelved.

Loonshots and its author, Safi Bahcall succeed in doing just that through an elaborate structure, effective transitions, as well as call-backs that strike a rare balance between the risk of too many repetitions and that of losing the reader along the way. As a result, the book unfolds very smoothly. Bahcall's proposed theoretical framework generates a mental map, which enables the reader to absorb and make sense of the many fascinating details provided in ensuing narratives around cases of innovations and innovators.

One of the book's most important take-aways is its point about organizational structure, which the author insists is a more useful notion than the exhausted and relatively more abstract concept of organizational "culture". The argument is a powerful and original one as it draws from physics and the literature on "phase transitions" (think water's liquid, solid and gas phase transitions): Leaders need to be cognizant of the fact (and the signs indicating) that their organization will go through various phases in their development (e.g. today's disruptive start-up might eventually become tomorrow's market leader (think Amazon, Facebook, Pixar but also the United States following the decline of the British Empire and perhaps China as the US shows signs of decline?)

Failing to recognize the impact of phase transitions means that someday a leader might also fail to recognize the opportunities presented by a "loonshot" idea - an idea that seems crazy to ever work but has the potential to be the determining factor in a company's success or failure or in a country's victory or defeat in war. Beyond knowing that fact and being aware of their own biases, leaders should never stop working on managing the tension between the creative/innovative and routine/franchise dimensions of their organisation, team, or country.

This goes back to the important notion of structure: companies that have succeeded and grown tend to drive staff to focus more on their careers because they feel increasingly removed from company outcomes (think of the relatively low impact of an even successful 500K drug market sale on a billion-dollar pharmaceutical giant's bottom line). This leads staff spend more of their time engaging in office politics and lobbying in order to get ahead. Safi Bahcall stresses that this draws a sharp contrast with the phase of a company at its beginnings, when it is trying to "make it": staff tend to be more focused on outcome, which they see as inextricably linked to both collective and individual successes (i.e. in 15-staff start-up, a successful breakthrough may mean everyone becomes a millionaire).

The author's key recommendation (which he illustrates through various case-studies and anecdotes from both the military to the animated film industry) is to separate "creatives" from those running the franchise ("phase separation"), while ensuring a constant feedback loop between those two groups ("dynamic equilibrium"). Ultimately, franchise leaders need to be pushed out of their comfort-zone and risk-averse mentality in order to ensure the franchise does not eventually become irrelevant (think Kodak, PanAm, Nokia). On the other hand, creatives need to stay in touch with reality, constraints and trends, as sometimes an industry will not be ready yet for an otherwise great innovation.

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