Author: Christopher Kernahan

We’ve just experienced the fastest stock market decline, ever.

Source: The Irrelevant Investor

The challenges now facing our industries range from:

• existential threats (Travel, Tourism, Hospitality, Shopping Centres)
• explosive increases in demand and required production capacity (Consumer Goods, Commodity Foods, Medical Consumables and Equipment)
• supply chain breakdown (Retail, Manufacturing), and
• prolonged downturns (Resources, Residential Construction).

Travel lockdowns and isolation procedures will create challenges for human resource management, technology, and information security.

How fast can you respond? And what’s holding you back?

Photo by Marc-Olivier Jodoin on Unsplash

Patrick Collison is building a fascinating list of “examples of people quickly accomplishing ambitious things together”, or put another way, some of the fastest projects in history.

A couple of examples from the growing list:

Apollo 8. On August 9 1968, NASA decided that Apollo 8 should go to the moon. It launched on December 21 1968, 134 days later. Source: Apollo Spacecraft Chronology.

Disneyland. Walt Disney’s conception of “The Happiest Place on Earth” was brought to life in 366 days. Source: Under Construction: A look inside Walt Disney’s Disneyland.

iPod. Tony Fadell was hired to create the iPod in late January 2001. Steve Jobs greenlit the project in March 2001. They hired a contract manufacturer in April 2001, announced the product in October 2001, and shipped the first production iPod to customers in November 2001, around 290 days after getting started. Source: Tony Fadell.

What drives a fast project?

Is it people? Scope? Tools?