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How To Make Moonshots

Posted by timothy on from the arise-phoenix dept.

An anonymous reader writes Google Glass failed. Its self-driving cars might change the world. At Google[x], pursuing the biggest, craziest projects means getting comfortable with failure — and embarrassment. Astro Teller, who leads Google's experimental lab Google[x], embraces the idea that failing fast is a way to learn even faster. "Larry Page told me, a little over two years ago, that he wanted to see us crash at least five of these scale versions of the energy kite. Obviously he wants us to be safe and we work very hard to be safe in everything that we do. What he meant by that was that he wanted to see us push ourselves to learn as fast as possible and though the learning from the crashing itself would be close to zero, he was pointing out that if you aren't failing, if you aren't breaking your experimental equipment at least occasionally, you could be learning faster."

18 of 112 comments (clear)

  1. That's all well and good... by TWX · · Score: 4, Insightful

    ...if you have the financial resources to afford to crash and burn. For most of us there's a significant incubation period that might even require profitability before we can afford to push past the point of safety or reliability and dial it back.

    --
    Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
    1. Re:That's all well and good... by drinkypoo · · Score: 5, Insightful

      For most of us there's a significant incubation period that might even require profitability before we can afford to push past the point of safety or reliability and dial it back.

      That's a sign that your aspirations are too aspirational. Failure is a common consequence of attempting to do things, and if you can't afford to fail, you're betting against the odds.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    2. Re:That's all well and good... by khallow · · Score: 4, Insightful

      No, drinkypoo got it right. If you can't afford to fail, then you're doing it wrong. And $5 billion losses are way outside Silicon Valley's comfort zone. They'd be dumb to commit that kind of money to a high risk "moonshot". The actual money range for initial projects is probably more on the range of a few thousand dollars to a few million dollars.

    3. Re:That's all well and good... by rtb61 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Your comment is a sign you have no idea at all what is really going on. Google tech indulgences and not empty tech indulgences, they are a modern marketing technique. They create a impression about the kind of company Google is, well, at least pretends to be and the kind of expertise they have, well at least pretends they have and each and every fucking single time they make a tech announcement or tech update or just randomly waffle on about the tech stuff they are doing, the press dutifully picks it up and free advertises Google to the world.

      Now you can either just burn money on advertising like M$ do, emptily B$ about features that disappear or make greatly exaggerated claims about their products or you can really be pretty cunning and sneaky, invest in high risk tech research that the worlds press will report on and get tons and tons of free advertising and have a chance of a big payout for that tech research (just leaving a 'positive impression about your company and products').

      At a guess their investment in tech research is generating something like about like between $3 to $5 of free advertising for each dollar invested in research and depending upon the announcement cycle and interest it is up to $10 and maybe as high as $100 on occasions. LIKE RIGHT FUCKING NOW

      --
      Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
  2. The real way to make moonshots by BarbaraHudson · · Score: 5, Informative

    2 oz Gin
    3 oz Clam Juice
    1 dash Tabasco

    They could have just googled for it :-)

    --
    "Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
    1. Re:The real way to make moonshots by JonathanR · · Score: 2

      That's the mooney shot.

  3. Ridiculous by sexconker · · Score: 4, Interesting

    This is ridiculous, upbeat bullshit intended to convince people that Google is a positive, dynamic, agile, bleeding-edge, open, otherbuzzwords place to work.

    You learn no more from failure than you learn from success. There are many ways to fail and few ways to succeed, thus it is better to learn what to do than what not to do. Failure simply slaps people upside the head and makes them think before trying again. Failure is a learning experience if you didn't plan ahead in the first place. Further, there are many scenarios where failing is not an option (e.g., medical, military, and space ventures). Failure in these areas is seen as a shameful mark worthy of criticism, lawsuits, retaliation, etc. more than it is a learning experience.

    If Google wants to drive people's cars around or float massive objects above their heads they better not be prancing about on Unicorn Rainbow "Failure is Okay" Island.

    1. Re:Ridiculous by Rich0 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      You learn no more from failure than you learn from success. There are many ways to fail and few ways to succeed, thus it is better to learn what to do than what not to do.

      Sure, but the point is that you often can't do the one without the other. Fear of failure tends to cause companies to just stick with what they already do well. That means they basically aren't learning anything at all.

      Of course companies should fund the projects that they think are most likely to become profitable. They'll still fail at some of them, and willingness to embrace that increases the odds that they'll come up with something truly innovative.

    2. Re:Ridiculous by Rinikusu · · Score: 5, Insightful

      A boy once asked a successful businessman what makes a man successful?

      "Good decisions, my boy, good decisions!"

      The boy thought for a moment and then asked how does a man learn how to make good decision?

      "Bad decisions, my boy, bad decision."

      I've found in life life I learn more from my mistakes than my successes. Similar to how poker players can rarely tell you about all the pots they've won, it's the big ones they lost that stand out in their minds.

      Feel free to change gender of the examples. It doesn't change the message.

      --
      If you were me, you'd be good lookin'. - six string samurai
    3. Re:Ridiculous by Okian+Warrior · · Score: 5, Insightful

      You learn no more from failure than you learn from success. There are many ways to fail and few ways to succeed, thus it is better to learn what to do than what not to do.

      This is a rational argument applied to the real world, and it doesn't hold true. Rational arguments are almost *never* true when applied to the real world, unless they start from a fundamental model and build up. (And in that case you can make testable predictions.)

      Eighty percent of first businesses fail, but only 20% of *second* businesses fail, and it's not because people don't try to do it right the first time.

      Both Thomas Edison and [head of IBM] Thomas J. Watson have extensive experience in this, and both have written positions on the subject. When someone approached Watson and asked "how can I increase my success rate", he responded "double your failure rate". When someone asked Edison how he could continue researching the electric light bulb after failing 5,000 times, he replied "I haven't failed 5,000 times, I know 5,000 ways that won't work" (source).

      The rational argument fails when it's applied to the risk/reward formulation. Each time you fail you lose 1x the value of the experiment, but each time you succeed you regain 50x the value of the experiment in profit.

      The mantra in the IT world is "fail fast, fail often", which reflects the risk-reward equation very well. It takes almost nothing to set up a website showing your idea to the world, and almost nothing to shutter it 6 months later.

      But once in awhile, that idea becomes popular and profitable and you can recoup your investment many times over. That's why people should fail; or rather, not be afraid of failure.

      Not because of any rationalization, but because it's historically the route to success.

    4. Re:Ridiculous by khallow · · Score: 2, Insightful

      There are many ways to fail and few ways to succeed, thus it is better to learn what to do than what not to do. Failure simply slaps people upside the head and makes them think before trying again. Failure is a learning experience if you didn't plan ahead in the first place.

      Here's the rub. You can never plan ahead enough to eliminate failure. Sometimes the cost of planning is not worth the cost of the failure you avoid.

      Further, there are many scenarios where failing is not an option (e.g., medical, military, and space ventures). Failure in these areas is seen as a shameful mark worthy of criticism, lawsuits, retaliation, etc. more than it is a learning experience.

      Not even a little bit. Failure happens all the time in medicine, military, and space ventures. It doesn't even make sense to assume that these areas where failure is or should be rare. For example, you will eventually die, which indicates that no matter how good or competent medical care is, it will always fail in the end. Military ventures are usually chock full of failure, merely because there are rival parties trying their hardest to make you fail. And every space vehicle has gone through a period of high failure rate in the beginning.

      Failure might not be an "option", but it is always present. Learning how to deal with failure rather than engaging in meaningless "shaming" is essential to success in these areas.

      You learn no more from failure than you learn from success.

      You learn different things from failures than you do from success. For example, a lot of areas such as every scenario you mentioned above, have recurrent failures. So if you analyze existing failures, you might be able to avoid or mitigate these failures in the future. You can't learn that from the successes, only from the failures.

    5. Re:Ridiculous by orlanz · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Excellent post. Posting to highlight a point.

      "fail FAST, fail often"

      Most businesses fail to do the first part and screw up the entire equation. Most bankruptcies, going out of business, bubbles, and mismanagement isn't because of failure. Its the lack of recognition of failure and continued operations that end up eating all the resources and erases the reward altogether.

      If you don't fail fast, you will fail once, period.

    6. Re:Ridiculous by Harlequin80 · · Score: 2

      There are many ways to fail and few ways to succeed, thus it is better to learn what to do than what not to do.

      Except by learning only by succeeding you can be left in the situation where you don't understand why you are succeeding. This means that you have a weak base to refine and expand your base because you don't know how you got where you are.

    7. Re:Ridiculous by Euler · · Score: 2

      I suppose it comes down to semantics of words.

      To me, failure means "Failure to meet project goals" that is always bad. Money runs out, timelines slip, safety is compromised, etc.

      It sounds like fail-fast means: "quickly write off solutions that are unworkable" To most engineers, that is just a feasibility study. Granted, the faster and cheaper you can write off a truly bad solution, the better off you are. Breaking a few prototype is not a failure as long as that was considered in the project budget. But giving up on a workable solution too early can lead to much churning.

  4. Misleading headline by Drunkulus · · Score: 2

    It should be "How to Make Segways"

  5. Google glass choices by Okian+Warrior · · Score: 2

    Google glass failed, but I suspect that they allowed it to fail due to lack of persistent development.

    The way most people work is that they try something, it doesn't work, and they give up. I've heard lots of things like "I can't learn to whistle, I've tried" and "I tried that, but it didn't work". Mostly it's amateurs building stuff and giving up on the first try: "I put the circuit together and it didn't work", or "I tried to build a spice rack for Marge, but it turned out awful".

    If you really want to make something, you have to be prepared to throw the first one out and start over. If the circuit doesn't work, find out *why* it didn't work and fix it. If your spice rack is awful, spend some time on YouTube looking at proper technique, then spend some time using the router (or table saw, or whatnot) with pieces of scrap until you get the hang of it. Then start the project over.

    Google glass could have been popular if they noted the feedback and piloted the project into more popular waters. For example:

    1) A flip-down cover for the camera, so you can interact with people and they know you aren't recording them
    2) A less restrictive interface, so that developers can show anything instead of storyboard images like a viewmaster. IOW, a direct graphical interface.
    3) a less expensive device (costs $150 to make, $1500 to buy). (Note: Cell phones have largely the same functionality and don't cost $1500)

    Rather than fix the problems, they decided to just let it die. Maybe they did market analysis and thought that it would never sell in any form, but I really doubt they went that far.

  6. Wrong Larry by geekmux · · Score: 2

    At first when I read about championing failure as a path to success, I thought they were talking about Larry Ellison.

    It explained so much about the quality of Oracle.

  7. Re:LOL by khallow · · Score: 2

    Yes everyone knows they set out with failure in mind with the Moon landing.

    You are right. They didn't. But failure was a really high likelihood at various parts of the program. For example, I've heard that the odds of losing at least part of the crew on Apollo 11, the first landing on the moon, were estimated at about a third, prior to the mission. Failure was a possible and way too likely outcome despite the "failure is not an option" mantra.

    The problem was not that Apollo program had a better solution to "moonshots" than "fail early, fail often", but rather that they couldn't do that. The program could have been made a bit more incremental and resilient to failure, but in the end, you're either landing people on the Moon or you're not. There are huge jumps in technology and risk taking that Apollo just couldn't avoid.