This is Doug; Doug the tug!

Doug, a tug, and its crew and cargo sailed past the Fish Lips restaurant in Cape Canaveral, Florida yesterday, right before I went on stage to present the Florida Association of Veteran-Owned Businesses, Inc. (FAVOB)’s State of the Mission Keynote about how local Florida businesses can Use First Principles Thinking to Solve Our Hiring Heroes Problem in the US (https://www.innovativepolicysolutions.org/articles/using-first-principles-thinking-to-solve-our-hiring-heroes-problem-in-the-united-states).

The reason I share this is because although Elon Musk is not the first great mind to use First Principles Thinking to solve complex, persistent problems (Aristotle, John Boyd, and Thomas Edison came before him), he is probably the most contemporary and famous due to a video interview with him about it posted on You Tube that got about 1.5 million views (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NV3sBlRgzTI).

He used FPT to create the local Florida-based Space X and solve the complex, persistent problem of expensive, rare, and risky space travel. I use this example as my opening illustration of what FPT is because we’re on Florida’s Space Coast, and how it can be used to solve complex, persistent problems. Then I discuss why hiring heroes, i.e., reintegrating military veterans back into the civilian workforce, is complex, and thus persistent. With us since at least Julius Caesar’s Roman Legions circa 13 BC! Finally, I share the First Principles of Veteran Hiring, then help the audience reassemble them in a new way that produces an innovative solution, solving this problem through the use of about 9 tools I provide to them.

Anyway, Doug sailed by us carrying a large piece of the next Space X rocket’s fuselage! You can just make it out in the tug’s darkened, open cargo bay. It was such an amazing prop! I had goosebumps because yes, I am a space geek!