Committed Innovation

Good thought about innovation, intro below.

The Committed Innovator: A conversation with Loonshots author Safi Bahcall

Why do some ideas fly and others fail, By Erik Roth    inMcKinsey

The Committed Innovator 

The entrepreneur and innovation adviser explains how to make bold innovations flourish.

 Article (7 pages)

Companies looking to bring breakthrough innovations to life need the right organizational structures and incentives in place. In his book, Loonshots: How to Nurture the Crazy Ideas That Win Wars, Cure Diseases, and Transform Industries (St. Martin’s Press, March 2019), Safi Bahcall, a former biotech CEO who now helps organizations innovate, explains what that requires. In this episode of the Inside the Strategy Room podcast, he talks with Erik Roth, leader of McKinsey’s innovation work globally, about why some great ideas changed the world and others failed to take off. This is an edited transcript of the discussion, which is the latest in our Committed Innovator series of conversations with innovation experts around the world. For more conversations on the strategy issues that matter, subscribe to the series on Apple Podcasts or Google Podcasts.

Podcast transcript

Erik Roth: You used to run a biotech company. Why did you decide to write Loonshots when you did?

Safi Bahcall: Not long after I started the biotech firm, my father was diagnosed with a rare type of leukemia. We were a cancer-focused company and I figured I could do something to help him. Unfortunately, nothing I could do made a difference and he died not long after. Over the years, as the company grew and went public, I spent a lot of time with R&D companies of all sizes and kept noticing how promising ideas, including ones that could have helped my father, remained trapped inside these organizations’ basements. That stayed with me.  ... '