Flying with Ray

I have been listening to a lot of NPR over the last few days since I have been driving so much to visit customers. I should be forced to do this more often (as I am sure I will be), as I get to catch up on all of those things I have become uninterested in due to time, and annoyance, such as politics. I was recently at book party with a friend who is an astrophysicist, and the writer of the book was speaking about the political landscape during this pre-presidential election period. This friend seemed to not be paying much attention. I asked her what she thought about the writer’s ideas, to which she responded “Oh I am sorry, I wasn’t paying attention. I am not so interested in local politics, and by local I mean the earth.” She should coin this quote, but I will leave it to her to accept or deny. I loved this, and actually I have always obsessed over politics, but truthfully without much real interest, just frustration, so I have turned to other things to occupy my obsessions. So, most of NPR was politics, but there was something that happened yesterday that extended beyond the local of my physicist friend, and that is the death of Ray Bradbury, who while of this planet was a sci-fi writer that looked far  beyond.  There was a great quote that someone mentioned of Bradbury’s which may be the best thing I heard all day. Once Bradbury was asked about how to do something really important, and he said “jump off of a high cliff, then build your wings on the way down.” It gave me a bit of a chill because it struck me not as a poetic piece of advice from of writer, but also something that we have been living with our company Nanotronics Imaging. We took a leap about a year ago, and are flying now, though perhaps not as high as we would like yet. This seems like obvious advice for an entrepreneur, and it is one that is getting popular with Eric Ries's ideas on the Lean Start-up, but traditionally this not how things have been done. Usually a product is built, refined and released. We don’t do things that way. We jump, and build wings. This means that we partner with customer, give them what we have and improve on that daily. It means constant iterations. It means improving until we have the best products on the market, and then still not being happy until we are better.. This is constant beta mode, agile development, but as Bradbury points out it also involves many moments of free-fall, which we all are in from time to time (ok almost daily).

So, this is just a short thank you to the now late Bradbury for not only creating great fiction, but also entering into the realm of business inspiration for me. Though he considered himself a writer of fantasy, his ideas are becoming scientific reality thanks to his own jumping, and flying.