Loonshots: How to Nurture the Crazy Ideas That Win Wars, Cure Diseases, and Transform Industries
What do James Bond and Lipitor have in common? Why do traffic jams appear out of nowhere on highways? What can we learn about innovation 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 and the challenges of nurturing radical breakthroughs.
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 rejecting them rigidly, just as flowing water will suddenly change into brittle ice.
Oceans 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, Bahcall shows how this new kind of science helps us understand the fate of companies and empires. Loonshots distills these insights into lessons for creatives, entrepreneurs, and visionaries everywhere.
Over the past decade, researchers have been applying the tools and techniques of phase transitions to understand how birds flock, fish swim, brains work, people vote, criminals behave, ideas spread, diseases erupt, and ecosystems collapse. If twentieth-century science was shaped by the search for fundamental laws, like quantum mechanics and gravity, the twenty-first will be shaped by this new kind of science.
Loonshots is the first to apply this science to help all of us unlock our potential to create and nurture the crazy ideas that change the world.
Reviews
“A witty, invigorating exploration of human behaviour and discovery.”
Nature
“An ambitious and entertaining effort to lay out some fundamental laws of success and uncover the truth about successful group behavior… Bahcall makes the whole idea sing by bringing in references from across business, history, cinema and science.”
Financial Times
“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 and author of Thinking, Fast and Slow
“A wonderful book that explores the beauty, quirkiness and complexity of ideas, Loonshots will both educate and entertain you. If you care about ideas — especially new and out-of-the-box ones — you need to read this book.”
Siddhartha Mukherjee, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Emperor of All Maladies
“Loonshots is a brilliant and wonderfully entertaining book, an unstoppable read, full of surprises and rich with insight into how people create and nurture things that change the world. It’s also an important book. Bahcall, a physicist and biotech entrepreneur, is unfolding the secrets behind successes everywhere.”
Richard Preston, New York Times bestselling author of The Hot Zone and The Wild Trees
