What I learned from reading Pieces of the Action by Vannevar Bush.
In pieces of the action, Vannevar Bush, engineer, inventor, educator, and public face of government funded science, offers an inside account of one of the most innovative research and development ecosystems of the 20th century.
As the architect and administrator of an R and D pipeline that efficiently coordinated the work of civilian scientists and the military during World War Two, he was central to catalyzing the development of radar and the proximity fuse, the mass production of penicillin, and the initiation of the Manhattan Project.
Pieces of the action offers his hard won lessons on how to operate and manage effectively within complex organizations, build bridges between people and disciplines, and drive ambitious, unprecedented programs to fruition.
Originally published in 1970, this updated edition includes a forward from Ben Reinhart that contextualizes the lessons pieces of the action can offer to contemporary readers.
These lessons include that change depends both on heroic individuals and effective organizations, that a leader's job is one of coordination, and that the path from idea to innovation is a long and winding one, inextricably bound to those involved, those enduring figures who have a piece of the action.
That is a description of the book that I'm going to talk to you about today, which is pieces of the action.
And it was written by Vannevar Bush.
So Stripe, the payments company, actually started their own publishing division.
And what they're doing is they're bringing back these lesser known and sometimes out of print or hard to find books and they're updating them and then publishing them.
So I'm going to leave a link to the website that I was just reading off of that came from Stripe Press's product description of the book that I'm holding in my hand.
It's well worth checking out.
All of the books that they publish are on this idea of ideas for progress, but they are also some of the most beautiful books that I've ever come across.
So I have this book, I ordered another book, or I have another book called the Dream Machine, which eventually will turn into a podcast in the future.
And then I just ordered another one of strip press's books, which is the making of the Prince of Persia.
And I'll leave all those links down below, of course.
So I.
This is the second book that I've read about van Eever Bush.
This is from his perspective.
He wrote the words when he was 80 years old.
There have been something like ten or 15 books over the years that I've read to completion and I never made podcasts on.