The Speculist

Building Nanotechnology to Last

Far better to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows not victory, nor defeat.
Theodore Roosevelt, 1899

In their book Built to Last, authors Jim Collins and Jerry I. Porras review the histories of 18 companies whose management style and underlying philosophy they have identified as being "visionary." The Roosevelt quote above leads off their chapter on goals. According to the authors, visionary companies set objectives that are grand and inspiring. They call these objectives Big Harry Audacious Goals, which they shorten with the nifty acronym BHAG (pronounced "bee-hag").

Collins and Porras cite a number of examples of BHAGs. An interesting example is the decision that Boeing made in 1952 to offer a jet aircraft to the commercial airline market. Fighting perceptions that their company was really a player only in the military market, and a pervading assumption that commercial aircraft would be propeller driven for the foreseeable future, the management of Boeing decided to put everything on the line and build a prototype commercial jet aircraft. The result was the 707, followed by the 727, the 737, and — somewhere along the line — a position of unshakeable dominance in the commercial airline market.

The authors contrast Boeing's performance with that of McDonnell-Douglas (part of a "control group" of non-visionary companies) during the same period. MD decided to play it safe and stick to their established market of propeller-driven aircraft. As a result of this decision, they were late entrants in the jet race and were never to catch up with Boeing.

According to Built To Last, the quintessential example of a BHAG is found not in the business world, but rather in the geopolitical arena: JFK's decision to send a man to the moon "before this decade is out."

President Kennedy and his advisers could have gone off into a conference room and drafted something like "Let's beef up our space program," or some other such vacuous statement. The most optimistic scientific assessment of the moon mission's chances for success in 1961 was fifty-fifty and most experts were, in fact, more pessimistic. Yet, nonetheless, Congress agreed (to the tune of an immediate $549 million and billions more in the following five years) with Kennedy's proclamation [.] Given the odds, such a bold commitment was, at the time, outrageous. But that's part of what made it such a powerful mechanism for getting the United States, still groggy from the 1950's and the Eisenhower era, moving vigorously forward.

Moreover, this BHAG is the reason that the U. S. was and is the only country ever to land a man on moon. Russia had a tremendous head start on us in the space race. And they had what may have been, overall, a better thought-out and more viable approach to exploring space. But they did not have a publicly decreed goal to make it to the moon by the end of the 1960's. And they never did make it. Where going to the moon is concerned, Russia will forever be McDonnell-Douglas to our Boeing.

Now I read where proponents of nanotechnology are looking for a BHAG of their own. Naturally, they take as their inspiration President Kennedy's commitment and the subsequent Apollo program. In the words of venture-capitalist Steve Jurvetsen:

"Whether conceptualized as a universal assembler, a nanoforge, or matter compiler, I think the ' moon-shot' goal for 2025 should be the realization of the digital control of matter, and all the ancillary industries, capabilities, and learning that would engender," [Jurvetson] said in an e-mail message.

The extreme miniaturization that nanotechnology will deliver could "restructure and digitize the basis of manufacturing, if such that matter becomes code," he said.

Meanwhile, for those who like their goals a little smaller, less hairy, and more unassuming, supporters of Richard (Assemblers Will Never Happen) Smalley are calling for a more modest objective: finding a solution to all of the world's energy problems.

Damn, I love this kind of stuff.

But I have to admit that the idea of a nanotechnology BHAG makes me both exhilarated and a little apprehensive. Yes, we might see the achievement of some major nanotechnology goal in a very short period of time. That's exciting. But what would happen next? That's what makes me apprehensive.

Consider what happened after our success with the Apollo program.

I remember seeing the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey when I was a kid and accepting it as a fairly plausible projection of where we would be in our development of space travel by, say, now. There was no reason no to think so. We had just sent the first man to the moon (not 10 years after the first manned spaceflight), and 2001 was more than 30 years away. At the rate we were going, the space station with its regular Pan Am service from earth, the moon settlements, and the Discovery and its voyage to Jupiter all seemed well within the realm of the achieveable. Apollo 11 was the platform on which it could all be built.

But what happened to that platform? John McKnight, in calling for a national monument for the Apollo project, paints a pretty bleak picture:

Today, Pad 34 is rusting away, marked only by those infamous signs reading "Abandon In Place." Today, the three remaining Saturn V's serve as immense lawn jockeys on NASA land. Today, many Americans believe we never went to the Moon at all[.]

What went wrong?

Was getting to the moon the wrong goal to pursue, or did we just go about it wrong? Maybe we painted ourselves into a corner, making that first moon shot happen within 10 years, adopting strategies such as lunar orbit rendezvous — which is a good idea if you're going to the moon, but isn't a whole lot of help if you want to go anywhere else. Maybe our BHAG failed us.

But I don't think so. I can't make myself agree with those who say that going to the moon was not a good idea. Going to the moon was a great idea. It just should have been followed immediately by the next great idea, and then the next one, and then the next one. Our BHAG didn't fail us; it's just the next BHAG failed to materialize. Maybe Neil Armstrong should have said, "That was one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind. And now, on to Mars."

For some reason, we followed up Apollo with Skylab and the space shuttle, which were not really that inspiring — and our unmanned missions to the planets, which were more inspiring, but were not nearly enough to get us to 2001. As the authors of Built To Last are quick to point out, a single BHAG doth not a visionary company (or space program) make. In responding to the suggestion that maybe Boeing wasn't such a visionary company, that maybe they just got lucky with the 707, Collins and Porras have this to say:

[We] would be inclined to agree, except for one thing: Boeing has a long and consistent history of committing itself to big, audacious challenges. Looking as far back as the early 1930's, we see this bold commitment behavior of Boeing when it set the goal of becoming a major force in the military aircraft market and gambled its future on the P-26 military plane and then "bet the pot" on the B-17 Flying Fortress.

And it doesn't stop there.

In 1965, Boeing made one of the boldest moves in business history: the decision to go forward with the 747 jumbo jet, a decision that nearly killed company. At the decisive board of directors meeting, Boeing Chairman William Allen responded to the comment by a board member that " if the program isn't panning out, we can always back out. "

"Back out?" stiffened Allen. "If the Boeing Company says we will build this airplane, we will build it even if it takes the resources of the entire company!"

I wonder whether this kind of spirit still drives the management of Boeing. I hope so. But it's clear that this is not the kind of thinking that drove the U.S. space program in the post-Apollo era. The management that gave us the space shuttle is more like McDonnell-Douglas and their attachment to propeller-driven aircraft then it is like Boeing and their pursuit first of the jet airliner and then of the jumbo-jet.

We need to think very carefully about the lessons that JFK and Apollo (as well as Boeing and McDonnell-Douglas) can teach us about setting a course for the development of nanotechnology. The first moon shot will remain an inspiration to us, but we should view what happened next as a cautionary tale. Maybe it isn't enough to say "We're going to build an assembler" or "We're going to build a nanoforge" or even "We're going to solve the world's energy problems." Maybe there should be a set of sequential goals, or a commitment to define the next goal while still working towards the current one. Whatever objective the nanotechnology community chooses for itself for the year 2025 (or whenever), they need to remember that that goal represents the beginning of something even more than it does the end.

UPDATE: Dean Esmay reports on a less dramatic development in the nanotechnology field. Working towards these LMUGs ("el-mugs," Little Modest Unassuming Goals) is important, too. Here's my own take on a new development (plus some thoughts on LMUGS). Here's another. Here are some more thoughts on whether solving energy problems is the appropriate BHAG.

Posted by Phil at July 18, 2003 06:59 AM | TrackBack