* Instant Wall Street Journal bestseller * Translated into 18 languages * #1 Most Recommended
Book of the year (Bloomberg annual survey of CEOs and entrepreneurs) * An Bloomberg Financial
Times Forbes Inc. Newsweek Strategy + Business Tech Crunch Washington Post Best
Business Book of the year * Recommended by Bill Gates Daniel Kahneman Malcolm Gladwell Dan
Pink Adam Grant Susan Cain Sid Mukherjee Tim Ferriss Why do good teams kill great ideas?
Loonshots reveals a surprising new way of thinking about the mysteries of group behavior that
challenges everything we thought we knew about nurturing radical breakthroughs. Safi Bahcall
a physicist and entrepreneur shows why teams companies or any group with a mission will
suddenly change from embracing new ideas to rejecting them just as flowing water will suddenly
change into brittle ice. Mountains of print have been written about culture . Loonshots
identifies the small shifts in structure that control this transition the same way that
temperature controls the change from water to ice. Using examples that range from the spread
of fires in forests to the hunt for terrorists online and stories of thieves and geniuses and
kings Bahcall shows how a new kind of science can help us become the initiators rather than
the victims of innovative surprise. Over the past decade researchers have been applying the
tools and techniques of this new science-the science of phase transitions-to understand how
birds flock fish swim brains work people vote diseases erupt and ecosystems collapse.
Loonshots is the first to apply this science to the spread of breakthrough ideas. Bahcall
distills these insights into practical lessons creatives entrepreneurs and visionaries can
use to change our world. Along the way readers will learn how chickens saved millions of
lives what James Bond and Lipitor have in common what the movie The Imitation Game got wrong
about World War II and what really killed Pan Am Polaroid and the Qing Dynasty. "If The Da
Vinci Code and Freakonomics had a child together it would be called Loonshots ." -Senator Bob
Kerrey
