Below Prof Bob Langer (MIT), cofounder of Moderna, talks about origins of mRNA (cameo for video adaptation of Loonshots)

Short 🧵on lessons from innovation that matters 1/8

#mRNA #vaccine #covid "My first 9 grant applications were rejected ... I couldn't get a job. People told us that angiogenesis couldn't work ... that mRNA couldn't work.

That was on the front page of the Boston Globe.

They were all wrong." 2/8

Some folks have asked me for a quick intro to the ideas in #Loonshots (amzn.to/2VIn6is). So below: thread with quick reads + videos 🙂

#1 First chapter: probably the best intro -- made it free here bahcall.com/loonshots-blog #2 The Five Laws of Loonshots

bahcall.com/five-laws-of-l…

New #DailyLoonshot - thread: S-type, P-type, and the story of the @BurgerKing "Whopper Detour" 👇
/1 A P-type #loonshot is a crazy product or technology no one thinks will work (transistor, digital camera, etc.)

S-type is a crazy strategy no one thinks will work. E.g. opening a retail store far from big cities, where there's no foot traffic (Walmart). /2

What?!
1- @Theteamatx has midwifed Waymo, Verily, Wing, Chronicle, Smart Glasses (early flop as consumer; used widely in other apps) and many v promising projects now in development (e.g. robotics, energy, food) /1

https://twitter.com/scottcjordan/status/1183701408823988225

2- Timeline to measure success for many of these projects is years out, so how would one judge failure now?? (3 years after invention of the transistor there were no applications and no revenue - so was the transistor a "failure" at that point?) /2