Ozan Varol

Ozan Varol is highly qualified to talk about how to think like a rocket scientist: he used to be one. He was part of the crew that launched the Spirit and Opportunity Mars rovers. In this book, he talks about the thought processes that rocket scientists use to identify and solve seemingly unsolvable problems. He’s bolstered the book with worksheets and exercises on his personal website that you can use to carry the lessons of the book into your everyday life.

I requested this from the library on the basis of the title. I liked the parts that talked about actual rocket science and that stressed the importance of having people who propose the moonshots AND people who shoot down the moonshots to make sure they are actually achievable. I think it’s important to carefully consider all aspects of an idea, including whether it’s been tried before, so you can learn from what didn’t work the last time it was tried and see if those same challenges remain. Sometimes it seems that higher-ups or entrepreneurs are all about being seen as “innovative” and wanting to change things for the sake of changing them, when it’s important to consider that the changes are being made properly and are coming from the right place.

I did not like reading about the founder of Tesla or the CEO of Amazon, because they come across as thinking that their innovations exclude paying workers fairly or offering adequate workplace protections. But this is a personal view, and Varol himself acknowledges the divisiveness of the founder of Tesla in his book.

This book has been blurbed by Susan Cain, Daniel Pink, and Adam Grant, so if you like books by those authors, you might like this too.… (mehr)