St. Martin's Griffin Loonshots: Nurture the Crazy Ideas That Win Wars, Cure Diseases, and Transform Industries

Often business books about innovation are more or less the same - this one brings something new to the table. It provides great examples, across industries and time, on how to successfully approach innovation in organizations.According to Safi Bachall, it is about finding a balance between 'franchise activities' (the things you know already will work) and the crazy stuff (the loonshots). What is really interesting is that, if you do too much of 'franchise activities' you will end up not developing as an organization. However, doing only loonshots will not be the solution either as many of those are likely to fail - finding a structure to nurture both types of activities is according to Safi Bachall what makes companies successful.I recommend everyone that wishes to get a new perspective on innovation to read this book.

Brill book. Very entertaining while useful

Really liked the example based narrative throughout. Usefully lays out why innovation in amongst normal business is so difficult to achieve

Well worth it.

The book idea is to force similarity between a science concept (phase transformation) and how organizations can function as a high performing unit.What’s good:- the central idea that new ideas (whether incremental or transformational) require breathing space and focus. The annoying thing is that he keeps referring to the scientist Bush to keep making his pointWhat’s missing:The author’s lack of business education completely misses to link many important concepts in his examples that run in parallel to his idea. Such as:- industry cycles. Loonshots can’t supersede industry or customer trends. Companies that have a sense of purpose aligned with industry trend are likely to succeed. Author ignores in his examples why some companies had better sense of purpose aligned with a trend- over exaggerates. Author is misusing some data. He mentions that NeXt from Jobs has sunk in 50 million. 50 million is not much for what he was trying to do - investment is relative! He was experimenting- what good businessman do. It seems a lot but he was testing it against the reward which could have been a lotAll in all, really non-informative book.