NASA pens, Soviet pencils and learning

It's a beautiful story. But, like so many beautiful stories, it is also untrue.

The idea that NASA was wasteful, stupid and profligate in developing a 'space pen' to write in zero gravity, while the pragmatic Soviets simplified things and used pencils is a fable that must now have become Aesop-like, but is not what happened.?This article ?elegantly reminds us that pencils are?not?what you want in space, and, as they're currently doing in contracting with SpaceX, NASA actually bought in its pens from a private company, paying $2.39 per pen, instead of the $129 per pencil they had been paying.

(image from The Smithsonian)

The problems of zero gravity writing were well explained. Necessity was indeed the mother of invention. But, as?Beulah Louise Henry ?would posit: "if necessity is the mother of invention, then resourcefulness is the father.” A private investor, Paul C. Fisher, would be the one who would patent and commercialise the solution, taking no up front investment from NASA (akin to Pfizer 'swerving' Operation WarpSpeed, perhaps).

Well-elaborated problems, communicated to in-the-moment unknown listeners, have a great history of productive solutions. If those same problems had stayed with only internal experts or team members, none of us would expect that the speed or the quality of the solution would have been improved. Just?as the AK-47 was a solution no internal expert ?would have designed (against yet-to-be-determined definitions of?‘best’ ), the kind of resourcefulness or ingenuity needed to innovate?may?reside internally, but the probability is low.

Separating the recognition of problems from their solutions, and?maintaining a pre-decision mindset , is a principle of asymmetric learning. A diversity of solutions need to compete, not just for the perfection of any one idea, but to establish a better?problem. The AK-47 wasn't better because it was a more accurate shot but because it worked where it was supposed to, just as the Fisher pen did.

However, this is not how pharma typically works. We have good counter-examples, such as Lilly's use of Innovent, but mostly we keep 'problems' (opportunities/ targets) in house, and we also try to use only internal expertise to develop our solutions, going outside to ask?specific?questions rather than broad ones. This matters, up to the level of defeating pandemics, and?winning world wars .

Asymmetric learning means finding solutions faster and better than your competition. This is possible if you fix your decision point in the future and spend your time gathering evidence for the decision you need to make, not the one you already took.

Whether that is the Soviets, or Alzheimer's Disease, deciding to learn at your internal pace and limits of imagination and knowledge is an approach that is limited, by definition - embracing the resourcefulness of the outside world is an opportunity grasped by only a few.