Jump-Starting America and Loonshots

Here are two books that discuss ways we can make the economy grow faster and promote innovation.  Both of them refer to Vannevar Bush and his inspirational push for research beginning in the 1940’s and continuing through his work with the U.S. Office of Scientific Research and Development.

JUMP-STARTING AMERICA is written by Jonathan Gruber and Simon Johnson, professors at MIT of Economics and of Entrepreneurship, respectively.  They make a robust argument for more government funding of research in order to stimulate private spending and to grow the economy, saying, “the major – and now mostly forgotten – lesson of the post-1945 period is that modern private enterprise proves much more effective when government provides strong underlying support for basic and applied science and for the commercialization of the resulting innovations.” Beginning with a summary of Amazon’s search for an HQ2, they note that by choosing already successful cities “the potential for Amazon to transform lagging communities remains unfulfilled.” Therefore, Gruber and Johnson also discuss geography of localized benefits of investment, with an entire chapter titled “America: Lands of Opportunity.” This is similar in some ways to Steve Case’s and JD Vance’s efforts with “The Rise of the Rest” bus tour which was recently profiled on 60 Minutes. Gruber and Johnson point out the high cost of housing, barriers to increased supply, and differences in mobility rates for college and high school graduates, contributing to a “continued divergence between the most and the least educated in our society.” However, they also look at rankings for quality PhD programs and undergraduate institutions to explore why so few “superstar cities” emerge, offering anecdotes about both Microsoft and Amazon independently choosing Seattle over Albuquerque. JUMP-STARTING AMERICA is a fascinating look at past patterns and future potential for investment in education and research; roughly a third of this well-researched book is filled with appendices, notes and index.  

LOONSHOTS by biotechnology entrepreneur Safi Bahcall deals with “How to Nurture the Crazy Ideas That Win Wars, Cure Diseases, and Transform Industries.”  Bahcall writes about how small changes in structure can transform a team.  Both in the book and in his March 2019 talk at SXSW he uses the example of combining a molecule of water either with a glass of water or with a block of ice – that same molecule will react differently in different circumstances. Hence, Bahcall advocates for applying the science of phase transitions, essentially crafting life at 32 degrees Fahrenheit, supporting innovators and doers equally, plus managing the transfer, not the technology.  One chapter uses examples from new drug development to discuss the surprising fragility of loonshots and he quotes Nobel Prize winner Sir James Black as saying, “it’s not a good drug unless it’s been killed at least three times.” Bahcall list several lessons:  beware the false fail; create project champions, and LSC: listen to the suck with curiosity, noting “I find it’s when I question the least that I need to worry the most.”  Other sections of his book stress the value of spreading a system mindset and draw on examples dealing with Edwin Land and Polaroid, with Xerox’s PARC and even with James Bond or Star Wars films. Diagrams are interspersed and approximately a fourth of the book is devoted to appendices, notes and an index. The concluding section of LOONSHOTS poses an important question: “any large organization develop[s] deeply held beliefs, sometimes consciously, often not, about both strategies and products – and loonshots are contrarian bets that challenge those beliefs. Perhaps everything that you are sure is true about your products or your business model is right, and the people telling you about some crazy idea that challenges your beliefs are wrong. But what if they aren’t? … How much risk are you willing to take by dismissing their idea?”

Business and Technology titles ...

I have not blogged about business or technology books in a while.  Here are several that we have ordered recently:

TROUBLEMAKERS by Leslie Berlin is all about “Silicon Valley’s Coming of Age” and as such it focuses on the years from 1969 to 1984.  I was shocked to realize that over the space of a few years (and roughly thirty-five miles) these five major industries were born:  personal computing, video games, biotechnology, venture capital, and advanced semiconductor logic. Berlin is Project Historian for the Silicon Valley Archives at Stanford University and author of The Man Behind the Microchip.  In her new book, TROUBLEMAKERS, she tells the story of several innovators such as “one of seven women among nearly eight hundred graduate engineering students” at Stanford in the late 1960s:  Sandra Kurtzig, who ultimately became the first woman to take a high-tech company public.  Others who are profiled include Bob Taylor (Defense Department and Xerox internet guru); Al Alcorn (video game/Pong designer); Mike Markkula (Apple executive); Niels Reimers (Stanford academic); Robert Swanson (Genentech and venture capital innovator); and Fawn Alvarez (ROLM telecom executive).  TROUBLEMAKERS is truly fascinating reading about the culture, challenges and triumphs associated with a time of dramatic change and will be of special interest to students of business and technological history.  There is an extensive bibliography and notes section.  

A DOZEN LESSONS FOR ENTREPRENEURS written by Tren Griffin and published by Columbia Business School provides a more modern day take on Silicon Valley and venture capitalists, focusing on key attributes of successful start-ups and business ventures. Griffin has interviewed 35 entrepreneurs (such as Marc Andreessen and Peter Thiel) and then reviewed their responses for patterns, with factors like markets, mission, and recruiting appearing most often.  Griffin summarizes by saying, “perhaps the playbook of industry disruption requires being naïve enough at the start to question basic assumptions and then staying alive long enough to employ skills that are unique and advantageous in the industry you seek to change.” Griffin has made an effort to include 6 women (of 35 total) amongst those being profiled, well above the industry proportion at senior levels. In addition, he writes in an engaging manner such as when discussing Rich Barton (Expedia, Glassdoor and Zillow) and stressing that acquiring skills may require a path that is nonlinear; “the ‘jungle gym’ replaces the ‘ladder’ as the metaphor for a career.” I have already recommended this book to our business department (there is a nice glossary of terms, too) and I know that the Entrepreneur class is anxious to see the copy we have ordered.   

In THE SENTIENT MACHINE Amir Husain, CEO of SparkCognition in Austin, Texas, focuses on “the coming age of artificial intelligence.” He opens with a story regarding the happenstance, due to having the right doctor with the right search terms, of finding an effective medical treatment for his extremely painful cluster headache condition.  From there, he refers to the benefit of having machines keep up more effectively than humans with the many medical advances – or their potential contribution in numerous other fields like astronomy, manufacturing, and financial services.  He goes on in Part One to outline the history of our fears about technological change, to explain what AI is, and to acknowledge the concerns expressed by Elon Musk, Bill Gates and others.  In Part Two, he explains that trying to suppress artificial intelligence work, “or subject it to draconian regulation, will be incredibly harmful to us as a civilization.” The final section looks to the future, reflecting on what is uniquely human and what is our purpose. THE SENTIENT MACHINE contains suggestions for further reading, extensive notes and a detailed index.

Looking for other new books on business and technology? Try Vivek Wadhwa’s DRIVER IN THE DRIVERLESS CAR  -- he contributes to pbsNewsHour and was featured in this report on the jobless future in August, 2017 OR look for HIT REFRESH by Satya Nadella about Microsoft. And you can soon check out GREAT AT WORK by Morten T. Hansen who just crafted a wonderful piece about “The Key to Success? Doing Less” in The Wall Street Journal. As always, if you have a title to suggest, please let us know.