Book Sips #25 — ‘Loonshots’ by 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, physicist and entrepreneur Safi Bahcall reveals a surprising new way of thinking about the mysteries of group behaviour that challenges everything we thought we knew about nurturing radical breakthroughs. Full of historical real-world examples and always inspiring. For me, ‘Loonshots’ is definitely on my list of books about bold ideas.
“This book has everything: new ideas, bold insights, entertaining history and convincing analysis. Not to be missed by anyone who wants to understand how ideas change the world.”
— Daniel Kahneman, winner of the Nobel Prize, author of Thinking, Fast and Slow
A sip from the book:
“As teams and companies grow larger, the stakes in outcome decrease while the perks of rank increase. When the two cross, the system snaps. Incentives begin encouraging behavior no one wants. Those same groups — with the same people — begin rejecting loonshots.”
Beyond the book
What are Loonshots?
Why do good teams kill great ideas?
Talk at the SXSW 2019
Loonshots
How to nurture the crazy ideas that win wars, cure diseases, and transform industries
by Safi Bahcall
Why read?
Drawing on the science of phase transitions, Bahcall shows 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.
368 pages, St. Martin’s Press 2019
