[Music]
Abraham Wald was a Romanian
mathematician that was asked during
World War two where to put additional
armor to prevent more aircraft from
being shot down the conventional wisdom
at the time was to put the additional
armor on the returning airplanes where
they had the most bullet holes the wing
and fuselage this type of thinking was
based on the returning aircraft not the
aircraft that were lost Walt had some
counterintuitive controversial ideas he
recommended you put the additional armor
where there were the least bullet holes
the engines this was opposite of the
recommendation of many of the
engineering minds of the day but Walter
reasoned that the returning aircraft
clearly proved that multiple hits to the
wings and fuselage could be survived but
numerous hits to the engines could not
Wald's small insight resulted in both
less fatalities and more aircraft saved
to be able to return to the fight his
counter intuitive thinking resulted in
more Allied victories in the air and
less Airmen lives lost
Walt's contribution didn't stop there
the air force of the Navy continued to
use his methodologies in the Korean and
Vietnam wars where more countless lives
were saved innovation isn't always about
inventing something new or a new way of
doing things
sometimes it's looking at a problem from
a slightly different angle and often
considering the opposite of the typical
solution innovators don't see different
things they see things differently I'd
like to read that to you again because
it took me more than once to really
understood what that means innovators
don't see different things they see
things differently I'm a colonel in Air
Force Reserve in an MB 11 captain for a
fortune 100 logistics company my role at
the airline is to optimize fuel
efficiency it's an important objective
because fuel is our largest expense at
over 1.3 billion dollars a year when I
joined the fuel efficient
c-team I learned that we air tanker fuel
into our busiest hub during our busiest
time of year so what is air tanker
incurring is when you put enough extra
fuel on an aircraft's that it flies into
that busiest hub does it require fuel on
the ground and then it can continue on
to its next destination the conventional
thinking when air tanker is that more
fuel is better but I had a hunch that
this was an inefficient plan that was
both costly to the airline and produce
excessive co2 emissions my team and I
crunched the numbers and we knew if we
want to optimize fuel efficiency and
reduce carbon emission that we need to
stop to focus and really understand what
the exact fuel was by stopping adding
extra fuel if we could determine the
exact amount of fuel to get that
aircraft to its next destination that
would be perfect and we found that it
required much less fuel than had been
previously planned so instead of the
mentality of more fuel is better we
looked at the requirements and determine
what the exact fuel requirements were
this was a counterintuitive
recommendation to the organization that
metric that met resistance every step of
the way because it went against the
conventional thinking of how we had
always air tanker fuel we could get the
company to focus on the exact fuel
versus more fuel we knew we could save
their lines money turns out we were able
to save the company over half a million
dollars and reduce co2 emissions by over
1,300 tons in 10 days we only ran that
plan for 10 days
although challenging innovation through
counterintuitive thinking can have a
profound impact by creating tremendous
efficiencies increasing the company's
bottom line and positively impacting the
environment it can also that
counterintuitive thinking
save lives once on a five and a half
hour mission flying from Southern
California to Hawaii
we were fueling six f-18 aircraft the
f-18s are very fast aircraft but they
cannot fly over the ocean without aerial
refueling on this particular mission
halfway across the Pacific one of those
aircraft suffered an engine failure and
I can tell you the nearest piece of land
was about 1,250 miles away so I wanted
you to take a moment and imagine how
that pilot was feeling when that
happened he just lost an engine he is
now unable to hold altitude he is
leaving his lifeline of that tanker
above he doesn't know if he has enough
fuel to make it to Hawaii and I'm
confident that he was question is his
ultimate fate at that point my team and
I had to come up with a plan quickly on
how we're going to refuel that disabled
aircraft I can tell you there aren't any
procedures for that type of there isn't
a procedure in this particular situation
if we did not figure out a plan that
mission was going to end catastrophic ly
we tried all that once we caught up to
him as he in the descent we tried all
the typical procedures on how you would
refute those option it threatened to
make his aircraft more unstable if we
did not consider the most out-of-the-box
counterintuitive and solution that our
he would have not made it so we tried to
think of something different we allowed
both airplanes to descend together in
what is a slow aircraft refueling
technique called a controlled descent
this is not a procedure that we use
normally use on an f-18
however in this case a slow aircraft
refueling procedure on a fast airplane
worked in this case a fast airplane
problem required a slow airplane
solution we were able to get him the gas
he safely made it to Hawaii and I can
tell you when I saw him later that night
I had I hadn't seen a happier pilot and
I couldn't be happier than sharing him
sharing my eyes with him so I'd like to
leave you with these final thoughts
continue to strive to see things
differently be open to ideas to go
against the conventional thinking and
despite the resistance that thinking's
can often bring embracing the
counterintuitive can make all the
difference thank you
[Applause]