It’s just like how many marketing, sales, and creative teams often don’t talk to engineering. Too many numbers. Too black and white. Too many geeks in one room geeking out.

But I wanted to understand the squishy stuff and the geeky stuff. And I liked all of it. I could also translate back and forth—explain the squish to engineers, translate the 1s and 0s to the creatives. I could synthesize all the pieces and keep the whole company in my head.

While there was much innovation that enabled our work, we had not let the technology overwhelm our real purpose: making a great film.

Lövgren asked the foundry managers who’d said they had the problem to invest their cash in the prototype. I confess I was a little nonplussed by this approach: ‘What would you have done if you couldn’t raise the funding?’ I asked when I saw him at a conference we were attending. Lövgren looked at me, rolled his eyes, and said, ‘Then I would have known it wasn’t a big enough problem for them to solve, and I’d have moved on to another business.’ Eventually, the business of making ‘robust robots’ specifically for foundries and other technically challenging environments took off.

This isn’t a gravity problem—it’s not impossible. It’s just that Dave’s stuck because he’s anchored himself to a solution that can’t work.

Javier might make a better head of engineering than Alan. Maybe. It was premature. James needed to watch him for a while. Javier was not a follower; he would try to impose himself on the company. That would cost stress and effort to restrain. But better a strong beast you had to fight to keep in harness than an obstinate little mule with no imagination who only ever said that it couldn’t be done.