ABSTRACT
Breakthroughs happen when people focus their attention on the issue. While most teams concentrate on the solution, breakthrough teams focus on the challenge and are open to whatever solution meets the test. If the solution is known and well-defined, the team is not likely to arrive at a creative or novel result. By allowing, and even encouraging, departures from the norm, interesting possibilities can and do occur. In some ways, the “magic” of open focus is that it is fundamental to all creativity, because it allows people to look at old things in totally new ways. In the almost 100-year history of airplanes, there has always been a special place for experimental aircraft. Although never designated as such, the first airplane flown by the Wright Brothers was an experimental airplane. Perhaps the most challenging technical aspect of the National Aero-Space Plane program has been the development of engines to propel the aircraft from takeoff to orbit insertion.
