Last July we celebrated the 40^th Anniversary of the first time men landed on the moon.

Tomorrow is the 40^th Anniversary of the moment we were reminded that space exploration remained a very dangerous business. That was the moment NASA received a message from Apollo 13 that turned out to be a masterpiece of understatement: “Houston, we’ve had a problem.”

The “problem” was a catastrophe: an oxygen tank ruptured 200,000 miles from Earth. The three astronauts on board survived only because of some extraordinary technical improvisations.

Entrepreneurs facing an apparently hopeless crisis could learn a lot from how they and the ground control staff responded.

1   Stay cool. The scriptwriters for Ron Howard’s superb film of the incident, looking for drama, later asked Flight Director Gene Kranz if anyone had panicked; he replied, “No, when bad things happened, we just calmly laid out all the options, and failure was not one of them.”

2   Prepare to be flexible. The amazing improvisation that saved the astronauts was possible only because everyone involved was highly trained and different scenarios – including that of using the Lunar Module as a “lifeboat” which saved the three men – had been considered in advance.

3   Innovate. Preparation on its own is not enough. No one can foresee everything that might happen, so there will always be events for which no one is prepared. The trick is to be aware of all the best conventional thinking without being bound by it – indeed, that could be the motto of the entrepreneur. 

4   The unexpected happens – but that can be a positive as well as a negative. Ken Mattingly was bitterly disappointed when an unjustified medical alert cost him his place on Apollo 13, but, as things turned out, none of the Apollo 13 men ever made it to the moon – Mattingly did, on a subsequent mission.

5   Despair serves no purpose. Lesser men might have been tempted to put their heads in their hands and cry when things looked bad. The NASA people were made of sterner stuff. As Flight Director Kranz said, “We never gave up on finding a solution”.