Innovation the NASA Way

Harnessing the Power of Your Organization for Breakthrough Success

McGraw-Hill, 2014

15 min read

10 take-aways

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What's inside?

NASA was once the world’s most innovative organization; today’s businesses can learn from its methods.

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Editorial Rating

Qualities

Innovative

Recommendation

The US National Aeronautical and Space Administration (NASA) has a remarkable history of space exploration. Its track record offers many lessons about incorporating up-to-date, high-tech and scientific advances to achieve innovation in your organization. Respected space authority Rod Pyle details NASA’s greatest accomplishments in this primer on innovation and its requirements. Pyle, an excellent narrator, offers valuable lessons from NASA’s successes and most dramatic disasters. Incongruously, his book gives shorter shrift to disasters, like the Challenger and Columbia shuttles, than to triumphs, though both carry lessons, and he even seems to recommend fibbing to get what you want. Pyle provides other, more positive little-known and very memorable information. For example, the idea for the space shuttle came from a planned Nazi winged rocket plane that was to drop atom bombs on New York City during World War II. getAbstract recommends this history to students, start-ups, entrepreneurs and any businessperson with a thirst for high-flying innovation.

Summary

Lunar Landing

In 1961, President John F. Kennedy announced to the world that America had set the goal of landing a man on the moon by the end of the decade. The moon mission became the primary task of the National Aeronautical and Space Administration (NASA). By the late 1960s, the Apollo program, which the space agency organized to achieve this spectacular target, proved exceptionally active. Apollo enjoyed numerous innovative technological triumphs, but suffered serious setbacks. The devastating Apollo 1 fire killed astronauts Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee.

Legendary astronaut Frank Borman directed an Apollo capsule redesign, and he was set to become the lead astronaut on the Apollo 8 crew that one day would set out to orbit the moon. In 1967, Borman and other NASA professionals learned – to their displeasure – that even though the Soviet space program could not muster a manned lunar landing, it could send a Soyuz spacecraft into manned orbit around the moon. Kennedy’s goal for the US meant getting to the moon with a manned spacecraft ahead of Russia. A Soyuz “looping lunar flyby” before the American lunar landing would...

About the Author

Rod Pyle led leadership training at NASA’s Johnson Space Center for business executives. He has written extensively on space exploration and NASA’s inner workings.

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O. K. 6 years ago

When I read a few of the summary, I am definitely going to read this more to catch well
L. S. 8 years ago

After watching the movie Hidden Figures, I am definitely going to read this!
J. S. 8 years ago

Nice summary

Rod Pyle