In honor of the 50 year anniversary of Neil Armstrong landing on the moon, we are going to talk about behavioral economics lessons you can learn from NASA! On July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong descended onto the lunar surface and uttered those immortal words, "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." It’s hard to believe that was 50 years ago, and that – knowing what we know today about technology – that it was able to be done with the equipment they had available. Most anyone today would think it was impossible to have completed that feat in the 1960s. So the questions may arise – why then? Why the moon? Why did it matter so much? There are lots of lessons your business can learn from NASA during the space race. While your failures are likely not life or death situations and you may not be breaking world records at every turn, and this story unfolded half a century ago, I want to break down five areas where your business – no matter what industry you are in – can learn from the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo missions at NASA. CLICK HERE FOR YOUR FREE DOWNLOAD! Show Notes: [05:40] On July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong descended onto the lunar surface and uttered those immortal words, "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." [05:43] Most people today would think that would be an impossible feat with 1960s technology. [06:40] The cold war intensified as the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, the first satellite, into orbit in October 1957 – much to the shock of the United States. [07:19] This led to fear and essentially kicked off the space race. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (also known as NASA) was created in 1958. [07:47] Kennedy really ratcheted up excitement and budget for NASA. [07:59] In Kennedy's famous speech at Rice University, he mentioned that the budget and taxes would be increased to accommodate the new space program.  [08:24] Overall, the Apollo program cost nearly 20 billion dollars – a third of NASA’s budget for those 13 years, so public interest was important to keep funding around for the program. [08:42] Kennedy also does a great job of priming and framing throughout the speech, and playing on the past victories and pride of the US, Texas and the city of Houston. [09:17] In the moon speech, he did great work to motivate the audience and the general public about the importance of the program and to encourage them to get behind the initiative. [10:53] Kennedy drew a line in the sand that helped launch the program. He also helped to overcome some hurdles by saying we CHOOSE to go to the moon. [12:02] Acknowledging our mistakes and hinting that the Soviets had mistakes helped to instill confidence and combat the availability bias. [13:24] Kennedy also made the task ahead relatable to the audience. [14:35] Kennedy's speech was truly amazing and inspiring. Everybody should read /watch it. [14:57] There are a lot of lessons that your business can learn from NASA during the space race. [15:47] 1) Look for problems (and solutions) [16:31] It would be impossible to think of every possible issue that could come up, but it was critical to think through as many of these pieces as possible. [17:01] Using challenges as inspiration is in direct competition with a bias humans are susceptible to called functional fixedness. [17:23] There are times in your business when this natural bias in your brain is doing more damage than you realize. [19:00] When the astronauts needed to fix their CO2 scrubber, they were literally faced with fitting a square peg in a round hole. Flight director Gene Kranz famously said, "I don't care what anything was designed to do--I care about what it can do."  Those on the ground were inspired to overcome their natural tendency toward functional fixedness to create an ingenious hack to save the lives of the astronauts over 100,000 miles away. [19:12] It's important to think through problems before they come up. [20:05] 2) Test and Retest (But Know When to Mov