On July 16, 1969 at 9:32 a.m. EST, five F-1 engines lifted the 6.2 million-pound Saturn V rocket into space (as a reference point, that’s the equivalent of tossing about 400 full-sized elephants into the air at once). Jeff Bezos, who was five years old at the time, was watching—intently. Four days later on July 20, 1969 at 4:18 p.m. EST, the young Bezos was mesmerized by the words “Tranquility Base here, the Eagle has landed” when the lunar module gently landed three men onto the moon.
Fast-forward 45 years to March 2013, and we hear “Bezos Expedition Base, the F-1 rocket engines have surfaced” (I’m not sure if anyone on the Bezos recovery team actually said it this way, but if they didn’t, they should have). Who would have guessed that a five-year old boy entranced with “the Eagle has landed” and “one small step” would be the same person who captured the world’s imagination with the recent recovery of numerous F-1 engine components from the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean? What an amazing ending to an amazing beginning.
Why did Bezos do it? It all started with a question—a question that Bezos cared about deeply. In his own words, “A year or so ago, I started to wonder, with the right team of undersea pros, could we find and potentially recover the F-1 engines that started mankind’s mission to the moon?”
I can’t help but speculate how many business executives would ever wonder about questions like that, and even more importantly, how many would care enough to actually do something about it. But wonder is not just a word that Bezos bandies for symbolic impact on employees or shareholders; I know firsthand it’s a feeling deeply ingrained in who he is and how he goes about his work.
About ten years ago, Jeff Dyer, Clayton Christensen and I (co-authors of “The Innovator’s DNA”) had the pleasure of interviewing Bezos. We were trying to figure out how Bezos gets new ideas that disrupt the world, specifically discussing the genesis of Amazon.com (AMZN). From our discussion, it was crystal clear Bezos has always been an experimenter. Since he was a five-year old child (and even before) he would spend summers at his grandparents’ ranch. Grandpa and Grandma were the ultimate do-it-yourself role models. If the tractor broke down, don’t call the tractor mechanic; fix it yourself. If the animals were sick, don’t call the vet (at least not immediately ); diagnose and heal them yourself.
Bezos learned fast that rapid experimentation fixed things on the farm. Now as an adult, he follows the exact same philosophy at Amazon, telling us that his fundamental job as a leader is to “reduce the costs of experimentation so that thousands, not hundreds, of experiments” take place. Not surprisingly, Bezos also has an off-the-job non-Amazon website called “Bezos Expeditions” where he captures and shares his current exploits. For sure, Bezos is, and always has been, an explorer at heart.
But it’s not just Bezos who explores the world to get new ideas. About one-third of the disruptive innovators whom we interviewed or studied for “The Innovator’s DNA” project were experimenters just like Bezos (i.e., Guy Laliberte, founder of Cirque du Soleil). The other two-thirds were driven to disruptive, world-changing ideas by actively observing the world like anthropologists (i.e., Scott Cook, founder of Intuit (INTU)) or by networking with people who didn’t act, think, or look like them (i.e., Marc Benioff, founder of Salesforce.com (CRM)).
Whether innovators explore, observe, or network to get new ideas, the best of the best are full of wonder about the world. A.G. Lafley, author of “Playing to Win” and former Chairman and CEO of Procter & Gamble (PG), wakes up every Monday morning wondering to himself, “What will I be curious about this week?” Brad Smith, current CEO at Inuit, has the same insatiable curiosity about the world as Bezos.
Without a childlike sense of wonder, the world would not go round. In fact, it would still be flat (not as seen through Thomas Friedman’s eyes, but from a second century historical perspective). Wonder is the antecedent to innovation – it rests at the core of the emotional plexus that powers creative action. Leaders who take the time to wonder “what if?” or “how might?” questions – regardless of whether that question will lead to “the next big thing” or remains unresolved – are the ones who change the world. Will you?
In Bezos’ 2010 Princeton commencement address, he made a deeply provocative statement, at least in terms of the lives we live. He said, “We are our choices. Make yourself a great story.” Bezos has certainly walked the talk on that one. Three cheers for his endless sense of wonder that surfaced a few long-forgotten F-1 engines that launched the historic Apollo 11 mission. To some, they may seem ugly. But to others, like me, they’re inspiring. After retrieving them from the sea, Bezos remarked, “NASA is one of the few institutions I know that can inspire five-year-olds. It sure inspired me, and with this endeavor, maybe we can inspire a few more youth to invent and explore.”
Bezos’ recent expedition into the sea rekindled my own hope that as adults we can all turn more of our attention, as Bezos has, to the next generation. That we will act in ways that inspire even a few of the world’s 1.85 billion young people to wonder a little bit more about what might be and then help them make it so. Hopefully, our collective sense of wonder will run so deep that each of us can surface at least one provocative question, as Bezos did, that compels us to act. After all, the answers we find may not always lead us to the bottom of the ocean or on the moon, but they will undoubtedly launch a new journey of discovery.
