Safi Bahcall, author of Loonshots, explains on the a16z Podcast why large organizations struggle to innovate despite having abundant creative talent.
Insight
Bahcall: Market projections kill early-stage innovation, especially in drug discovery
“Nothing kills a great idea faster and has been more of a disaster to innovation, certainly in my industry in drug discovery, than the idea of market projections.”
Opinion
Bahcall: Companies reliant on top-down visionary leaders eventually fail
“So all the companies across history that have done that have failed spectacularly. They may survive for a while, you know, when there's a Moses on the mountain with a staff anointing the next holy loon shot. They may survive for a while, that's the hysteresis …”
Insight
Bahcall: Ancient empires stifled innovation much like modern big pharma
“China, India, and the Islamic empires were a lot like the Merck, Pfizer, and Novartis of today. They were global, everywhere, dominant. They're phenomenal at franchises. So in India, you've had the Taj Mahal. You know, in China, they built the Great Wall and j…”
Insight
Bahcall: Sustained tech success requires valuing operators and creators equally
“And only by evolving and learning to love his artists and shoulders equally, that's when Things really took off. And that's why Vannevar Bush succeeded, and so many scientists before him failed, because soldiers love soldiers, artists love artists. He not only…”
Assertion Supported
Bahcall: The transistor was originally an incremental innovation at Bell Labs
“It was developed at Bell Labs, although it was based on a lot of federal research, but it was developed at Bell Labs while they were looking for better switches. By every definition, it was an incremental innovation, not a quote disruptive.”
Insight
Bahcall: Leaders control company behavior through four structural design parameters
“It turns out when you work out the mathematics of this, of the incentives, the two forces, there are four control parameters inside organizations, elements of organizational design, and that the CEO, the executive team, the board has control over, just like yo…”