Loosely functioning disasters

Prime Future 193: the newsletter for innovators in livestock, meat, and dairy

Private equity investor Brent Beshore says, "All businesses are loosely functioning disasters."

It's funny because it's so true, even more so for emerging businesses.

While I will go to the mat on the fact that there's no such thing as a startup inside a big company, the chaos inside any emerging business is second to none.

Shoe Dog by Phil Knight is one of my favorite books about entrepreneurship because he doesn't clean up the Nike story and make it seem like Nike was inevitably going to become what it became. He shares the near-death moments and the decisions that could have been the beginning of the end, including many examples of the loosely functioning disastrousness. And yet, it worked.

For those same reasons, I really enjoyed "Detour: My Unexpected, Amazing, Life-Changing Journey with OnStar" by Chet Huber.

While Chet wasn't a startup founder, he was the driving force that took OnStar from idea to multi-billion dollar business while operating within the confines of the mega, massive, bureaucratic machine that was GM in the mid-1990s.

Another loosely functioning disaster that worked.

Today, we’re learning from Chet's battles in the earliest days of that journey.

This one is for anyone building anything new, especially within big companies. While the specifics will look different depending on the company and the new product, the challenges are likely similar across the board.

He doesn't tie it up in a neat bow so I'm not going to either, partially because I think the messiness in the OnStar story is a fantastic reminder that the messy business of innovation just isn't one where neat bows get tied, and partially because Chet highlights so many relevant ideas that I want to let him speak for himself.