Shooting For the Stars

VARBusiness

NASA used to be a huge innovator. Its very existence inspired people to shoot for the stars, literally and figuratively. Looking at the history of the space agency from the 1960s to the present in some ways mirrors the path followed by U.S. business.

Take Apollo 13, the mission that was supposed to be the third lunar landing, but instead suffered an explosion that crippled the spacecraft. All three astronauts landed safely back on Earth, and the events generated dozens of books and the Apollo 13 movie, which starred Tom Hanks as Jim Lovell. Haise was played by Bill Paxton.

Haise mentioned that at its peak, the space program had 400,000 employees in more than 40 states. But the more interesting fact is that after the explosion. NASA woke up 10,000 of those people and got them working together to get their flyboys back home. That is perhaps the biggest peacetime technological mobilization I can think of. And I doubt we could accomplish anything near that level today.

What impressed me was how NASA could do such incredible problem solving in real time and against such odds. The electric power levels with which they had to deal were on the order of a couple of watts and the materials available to the astronauts were crude, based on duct tape and not much else. To me, that is innovation and ingenuity in its finest hour. But the gear isn't the only thing that intrigues me; it's the people behind the scenes who got the job done.

Gene Kranz (played by Ed Harris in the movie) was the mission controller. His recollections of the event are worth repeating:

"When Jim Lovell called in with, 'Houston, we've got a problem,' my teams were ready. The tools to manage the risks of our business are leadership, trust, values and teamwork. Leadership provides the direction; trust allows us to make the seconds count; values provide the chemistry that binds us as a team; and teamwork assures our ultimate victory.

The most vivid memories are of the people in the control room. Four teams of controllers functioned perfectly, like an Olympic relay team, for four days taking needed actions, building the options, improvising and buying time. Our top-level management trusted us to solve the problems and then got out of our way as we worked. As the crisis unfolded and the crew's situation became increasingly desperate, young people stepped up to the plate and every time I needed an answer, they hit a home run.

To me, that's what innovation is all about. You have bunches of people organized around a common goal, able to work past their limitations and overcome their emotional differences and personalities, and do something that had never been done before. You have a management team in place that can delegate and organize this talent pool and handle a crisis effectively and decisively, at the same time motivate people to push themselves beyond their limits.

Sadly, this can-do attitude is missing from our current space program--and from too many U.S. businesses. Any quick perusal of the recent shuttle accident report will show you that NASA has fallen far short of the glory days of the late 1960s and early '70s. Management no longer inspires but obfuscates. Teams of people don't trust each other and become mired in promoting their own work at the expense of their colleagues. Core values are compromised in the interests of cutting costs. Risks and safety take second seats to getting more missions out on the launch pad.

All of this is food for thought if you run a technology company today. If you are going to be a top innovator, you have to assemble the right team of people. Forget about the widgets,you need to foster the same type of environment that Kranz was talking about. That's what we aimed to do at the VARBusiness Tech Innovator Awards: Honor those who weren't afraid to shoot for the moon. These are the companies that are not ignoring the tried and true, but going beyond it. At our awards ceremony, we honored 24 companies and their products from vendors large and small.

Maybe next year, your company will play among the stars.