Business Innovation Lessons From NASA (8 lessons)

Lesson 1: Go Lean, but Don't Give Up

The Apollo Lunar Module needed to lose weight to work. So engineers removed or reduced everything that wasn't essential: windows, seats and even side panels.

Lesson 2: Don't Let Budgets Handcuff Innovation

NASA's Voyager was designed to respond to budget concerns about a "Grand Tour" of the planets with twin spacecraft, resulting in the building of two smaller, more cost-effective probes.

Lesson 3: Outthink the Competition

The Russians had bigger, better rockets. Then Rocketdyne, a U.S. rocket engine company, built the largest, most powerful, most reliable rocket engine ever: the F-1.

Lesson 4: Create Templates to Save Time, Money

The Space Shuttle program depended on a semi-reusable plane. Some 134 missions later, it stands as testimony to great achievement within a highly constrained budget.

Lesson 5: Foster Winning Partnerships

By partnering with MIT in the 1960s, NASA came up with the Apollo Guidance Computer, the first-ever computer with digital, integrated-circuit technology.

Lesson 6: Design for Functionality First

The Apollo moon suit improved on the prior bulky, inflexible designs with rotating joints on gloves and rubber fingertips that are thin enough to "feel" objects.

Lesson 7: Perseverance Pays Off

NASA leaders dreamed of landing spacecraft on Mars in the 1950s, but before Viking, they couldn't get there. In 1975, NASA sent two twin landers to opposite sides of the planet.

Lesson 8: Unusual Challenges Require Unusual Responses

They thought the Mars rover, Curiosity, was too heavy to land safely. So NASA got the spacecraft to slow to almost a hover using parachutes and rockets, then lowered the rover with ropes.