Prologue 1
Introduction 4
Part 1 Engineers of Serendipity
1. How Loonshots Won a War 17
Life on the edge
The Dorchester
How not to fight a war
Gathering storm
Massacre
"One at a time, please"
Eight Nobel Prizes
The first two rules.
2. The Surprising Fragility of the Loonshot 45
Akira Endo and the heart of stone
"It's not a good drug unless it's been killed three times"
Fungi don't run
Saved by chickens
A $90 billion coincidence
Beware the False Fail
3. The Two Types of Loonshots: Trippe vs. Crandall 65
Jet engines vs. frequent fliers
The pie industry
The dangerous virtuous cycle
Wars, loonshots, and cuckoo clocks
"He went from Jesus to Judas"
Watch your blind side.
4. Edwin Land and the Moses Trap 94
When leaders anoint the holy loonshot
Han Solo's escape
Disappearing fish
"Why can't I see it now?"
Photons, electrons, and Richard Nixon
Notes on falling in love
5. Escaping the Moses Trap 121
Buzz and Woody rescue a 747, invent the iPhone, and explain system mindset
Eight megabytes of sexual satisfaction
Isaac Newton vs. Steve Jobs
Balancing Ugly Babies and the Beast
How to win at chess
Summary: The first three rules
Part 2 The Science Of Sudden Change
Interlude: The Importance of Being Emergent 153
6. Phase Transitions, 1: Marriage, Forest Fires, and Terrorists 160
When gradual shifts cause sudden transformations
Jane Austen, physicist
From gas masks to forest fires
How to be simple
Six degrees of Kevin Cricket
When terror goes viral
7. Phase Transitions, Is: The Magic Number 150 186
Why size matters
Mormons, murder, and monkeys
The Invisible Axe
The tug-of-war
The innovation equation
8. The Fourth Rule 203
Raise the magic number
Web of Darpa
A giant nuclear suppository
Six degrees of red balloons
A toothpaste problem
A shredding problem
Postscript: From Nobels and nudges to nurturing loonshots.
Part 3 The Mother Of All Loonshots
9. Why the World Speaks English 231
The Needham question
Eight minutes that changed the world
Movies, drugs, and empires
Loonshot life support
Why England?
The three greatest loonshot nurseries in history
Afterword; Loonshots vs. Disruption 258
The transistor
Walmart
IKEA
The truth about drug discovery
Acknowledgments 265
Glossary 269
Appendix A Summary: The Bush-Vail Rules 273
Appendix B The Innovation Equation 281
Illustration Credits 285
Source Notes 287
Endnotes 315
Index 339