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>Not only have quite a few companies and organisations successfully completed huge, ambitious, forward-looking projects Hmm, and what would those be?

• iainmerrick 10y ago
  The first example that came to mind (and made me add "organisations") is the creation of the National Health Service in the UK. A massive undertaking, especially as the country was still recovering from WWII, but massively successful. Apollo, of course. The Manhattan project. Lots of NASA space probes. Hmm, to be honest I'm less sure about companies... The phone network? Or laying railtrack right across the US? Oh, and a topical one: the ARM chip! It was totally ridiculous for a tiny company like Acorn to jump straight from the 6502 to their own custom, cutting-edge microprocessor.
  • ksk 10y ago
    Okay, to me some of your examples seem high risk, but still incremental. There was plenty of prior research/innovation/development in those areas that they built upon. But to be fair, I also think that its almost impossible for someone to independently do something 'earth shattering' without building upon other people's work.
    • iainmerrick 10y ago
      You're right, I suppose it's a continuum -- everything is incremental to some degree or other. The Manhattan project is probably the best example, because there was nothing to build on except "science strongly suggests we could make a bomb out of this; we have no idea yet how to solve the practical issues, or even what all the practical issues are." It was partly incremental in that a much smaller nuclear bomb would still have been useful, but there was definitely a big risk that it just wouldn't work at all.