Ignored, denied, and swept under the rug I talk a lot about the need for experimentation. All the management techniques intended to speed products to market involve some form of iteration, feedback and correction. Many suggest we should celebrate failure to counteract the unhealthy assumption that all failure can be avoided with planning, The Boeing…
Which was the moonshot? The term moonshot is often used to refer to an overly risky and unproven endeavour. Ironically, the methodical approach taken to develop the technologies that safely brought men to the moon in 1969 was abandoned when the Space Shuttle was conceived. I examine the different approaches, the tragic results, and what…
SCAMPER In my last post I wrote about SCAMPER, a proven idea generating technique. In this post, I am going to examine ways we can apply SCAMPER to come up with the kinds of innovation we see at SpaceX. S is for SUBSTITUTE Substitute: Why send a brick when you can send a car? Test…
Top Gun “That’s right, Iceman. I am dangerous.” Lt. Pete “Maverick” Mitchell Some parts of the 1986 movie Top Gun starring Tom Cruise as Maverick are downright cringe worthy, but the flight sequences and lingering pans over the gorgeous F-14 more than make up for it. In this Youtube video, former Northrop Grumman VP Mike…
Proven reusability “For a long time people were using the space shuttle as an example of why reusability is dumb. You can’t take a single case example and make an entire theory out of it.” Elon Musk Musk has frequently made the case that discarding a rocket is like flying a jumbo jet across the…
Problems are invitations for your best work If problems are threatening to give you an ulcer, consider that these problems and your ability to solve them give you purpose. It’s also a lot more fun to solve problems than do the same old same old every day. They didn’t make a movie about Apollo 12…
Big appetite As your team’s innovation abilities develop, your appetite for risk will likely increase, but the total amount of risk being undertaken needs to be understood at all times. Carefully chosen innovations will provide average returns to the upside. It’s like gambling, but in this case you are the house. They say the house…
Segmentation When gravity is absent and the fuel doesn’t naturally stay at the bottom of the bank, other schemes must be used to keep the propellant adjacent to the pickup. I’ve previously examined this issue here and here. What I love about this blog is it kindles my curiosity. I was inspired to look again…
Lunar lifeboat An electrical short in an oxygen tank caused an explosion in Apollo 13’s service module. This cylindrical module was tipped with the command module, the bell-shaped capsule that plunged through the atmosphere to return astronauts to earth. Docked to the top of the command module was the lunar module with its spindly landing…
Early aerodynamic testing Before the advent of the wind tunnel, experimenters would use a whirling arm to measure drag and lift on models. The weakness of this approach was that the model would be travelling in its own wake. In 1901, the Wright brothers tested their aircraft design in a rudimentary wooden tunnel with a…