Summary

<aside> 💡 The book "Loonshots" presents the idea that small changes in structure can significantly impact group behavior.

• The author introduces two types of 'loonshots' or innovative ideas: P-type (technological/product) and S-type (strategic).
• P-type loonshots are technological innovations that are often dismissed before they triumph, such as streaming video.
• S-type loonshots involve a new way of doing business or a new application of an existing product that does not involve new technologies, such as Google's free Android operating system.
• The importance of maintaining a balance between nurturing new ideas (loonshots) and maintaining successful steady-growth parts (franchises) of an organization is emphasized.
• The author warns of the 'Moses Trap', where ideas advance only at the pleasure of a powerful leader, which can lead to the neglect of potentially successful ideas.
• The book highlights the importance of project champions who can effectively promote and defend new ideas, and the need to listen and investigate negative feedback (Listen to the Suck with Curiosity - LSC). </aside>

Notes

small changes in structure, rather than culture, can transform the behavior of groups, the same way a small change in temperature can transform rigid ice to flowing water. (Location 46)

“When asked what it takes to win a Nobel Prize, Crick said, ‘Oh it’s very simple. My secret had been I know what to ignore.’” (Location 106)

Drugs that save lives, like technologies that transform industries, often begin with lone inventors championing crazy ideas. But large groups of people are needed to translate those ideas into products that work. When teams with the means to develop those ideas reject them, as every large research organization rejected Miller’s piranha, those breakthroughs remain buried inside labs or trapped underneath the rubble of failed companies. (Location 122)

My resistance to after-the-fact analyses of culture comes from being trained as a physicist. In physics, you identify clues that reveal fundamental truths. You use those clues to build models that help explain the world around you. And that’s what we will do in this book. We will see why structure may matter more than culture. (Location 150)

“The whole becomes not only more than but very different from the sum of its parts.” (Location 200)

When people organize into a team, a company, or any kind of group with a mission they also create two competing forces—two forms of incentives. We can think of the two competing incentives, loosely, as stake and rank. (Location 217)

When groups are small, for example, everyone’s stake in the outcome of the group project is high. (Location 220)

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. (Location 223)