“Give us the tools, and we will finish the job.”
–Winston Churchill
About a year ago I read a blog post from Ben Horowitz, cofounder and General Partner of the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, entitled “Peacetime CEO/Wartime CEO.” The basic idea proposed by Horowitz is that an organization in peacetime has a large advantage versus the competition in its core market, and an organization in wartime is fending off an imminent existential threat; in both cases, there is a best-suited style of leadership for each. I’ve thought repeatedly about the topic since I first read the post, and wonder: is the key challenge we face in moving ahead in human spaceflight one of having the wrong kind of political and executive leadership in place right now?
