Safi Bahcall was a recent guest on the Tim Ferriss podcast. He told interesting stories, like his first date with his wife-to-be, though she believed it to be a business meeting, and how he’d sit in a bar for hours studying a single page of a book to appreciate the use of language. He came across well, charming and engaging, knowledgeable but with humility, so I bought the book he came to plug. And, yep, the book comes across exactly the same way – friendly but hugely interesting.
Loonshots are crazy ideas that die at least three times, are neglected for lack of deployment opportunity until they get reinvented for another purpose and deliver innovative solutions. The book is full of great stories and examples, from radar and sonar, microchips and PARC creations, to the mistakes that prevent people like Jobs from initially succeeding, to how you can structure organisations to allow them to occur (as Jobs finally discovered) – all engagingly explained with a congenial writing style.
An immensely interesting read, highly recommended.
See review on Goodreads.