29 - STACKING RISK
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BD Wong in his role as Henry Wu in Jurassic Park (1993).
Hammond’s motivations for recruiting Anna Rodriguez are clear. But in order to understand the candidates pursued by the lawyer representing Jurassic Park’s investors, their own priorities and goals must be examined as well. We must understand their perspective, how they perceived the Jurassic Park project.
And that perception was invariably rooted in the atypical nature of Jurassic Park, in terms of financial investment.
Of course, whether Jurassic Park actually is an atypical case is a topic of debate to this day. Many competing narratives have stratified over the years, framed to corroborate this or that pre-existing vision of the world.
To defenders of capitalism, for example, there’s nothing inherently atypical about Jurassic Park: it’s a brilliant example of entrepreneurial initiative and technological ingenuity, a case of doing well by doing good. Bleeding-edge technology, paired with accumulation of capital, performing miracles for all to see.
To other observers, however, Jurassic Park is typical in a different sense: as a classic example of capitalist hubris.
In this narrative, the entrepreneurial genius is replaced by venture capitalists without scruples, and the technical ingenuity is a wasted opportunity: a technology with incredible potential gets patented and used, not for the benefit of humanity, but for the creation of a profitable amusement park. A park where patented extinct animals are the attractions, housed in a facility built on stolen indigenous land, to boot. (1)
Irrespective of the wider validity of the defences and criticisms thrown at InGen, it must be clearly understood that at least in the narrow sense of traditional capitalist investment, Jurassic Park really was pretty far from typical. On the contrary, it was unique.
Venture capitalism is no stranger to moonshot projects. (2) The term “startup” was already widespread in 1988, (3) and with good reason: ambitious projects seeking funds were a dime a dozen.
What made Jurassic Park different was the perfect intersection of so many things that could go disastrously wrong.
Few investors are comfortable with projects that stack risks, and Hammond’s vision definitely stacked them like few others.
For any ambitious startup touting a new revolutionary technology, the first critical hurdle is always going to be about the science and engineering involved. Are the fundamentals sound? Does the technology work, and is it actually viable?
Jurassic Park clearly checked this box in dramatic fashion, but this also came with its own implications. While much is made of Hammond’s genius and vision, it must be recognised that the biggest asset early on - besides Atherton’s miniature elephant - was Henry Wu himself. Investors trusted in his brilliance.
Other boxes, however, were more problematic. Personnel risks were obvious, given how permanently overworked and short-staffed InGen was, in the lead up to Roberta’s birth. And maybe most importantly, the business model presented an uncomfortable degree of operational risks.
After all, many assumptions underpinned the very effort to build the park.
The first assumption was that the Costa Rican tourist industry would take off around and beyond the park, providing the right environment and reliable infrastructure to enable a steady flow of tourists.
The second assumption was that there would be enough traffic to this remote island to make a good profit - tens of thousands of people a day was the unspoken but undeniable minimum goal, a non-trivial amount of people to lure to a tropical island. (4)
The third assumption was that the dinosaurs could, indeed, be safely contained, and that lawsuits wouldn’t bring the whole thing crashing down - even worse, that Jurassic Park’s liability might be uninsurable.
Suddenly, this assumption no longer seemed like a safe bet.
Would actuaries and underwriters be willing to provide coverage to the park? Zoo accreditation or not, if the Morales incident was not isolated, Jurassic Park might well become a high-frequency-claim commercial property.
That could still be worked with, in and of itself, but typically, insurers are comfortable taking on high-frequency-claim businesses only if the claim costs are predictable and stable over time.
If Jurassic Park truly had fundamental and unsolvable safety flaws, this would simply not happen. And if the park was classified as uninsurable, the position of its financial backers would become much more precarious.
Over time, commentators who have gone over the history of InGen or, more broadly, de-extinction, have pointed out that decoupling the technology from the idea of an amusement park would have been a sensible step.
The technology, after all, was clearly powerful, and could potentially see a variety of applications across multiple industries - agriculture being a very obvious example. A clearly safer package, and thus much more palatable to investors.
Was this option seriously considered after the Morales incident, or even brought up? At time of writing, no one can be certain. Many of the people involved have always refused to comment on the financial evaluations and risk assessments that were being made at the time.
All the same, we can assert with confidence that Hammond would not have it.
As has been thoroughly established by now, this was more than just a quest for profits for Hammond: he was closing the circle, looking for closure, “fixing” his childhood. His motivations were profoundly emotional, and so were his pitches.
InGen had the technology, and in order to reap the benefits, investors interested in it would have to bankroll the park, too.
It must also be said, in fairness, that the amusement park side of the Jurassic Park project probably ended up being a double-edged sword, rather than just an obstacle. It increased risks, yes. But it also offered an immediate, tangible, vivid proposal for a “conventional” commercial application of its technology.
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Be that as it may, by the time of Morales’ death, it was far too late to backpedal away from the park idea.
Persuaded by Hammond, bedazzled by the birth of the first dinosaurs, or simply led by their own lucid assessments, Jurassic Park’s investors had already committed too much. All aspects of the operation were oriented towards the creation of an amusement commercial facility.
Jurassic Park would open as an amusement park, or it would not open at all.
The lawyers that represented Jurassic Park’s investors were Cowan, Swain and Ross, an established firm in San Francisco, and they knew what they were doing. (5)
They correctly understood that, this late into the creation of the park, all other avenues to bypass or avoid operational risks were off the cards. Therefore, there was only one way to proceed, as far as the interests of their clients were concerned: address said operational risks directly, in a narrow and practical sense.
They also knew that Hammond had snatched an early win, by redirecting their attention away from the zoo accreditation system, and appointing a palaeontologist to the endorsement team. They had no intention of being so one-upped again.
While Hammond was busy wining and dining Rodriguez, the law firm got to work on their own candidates for the endorsement team. They did so with a wholly different priority.
Hammond’s utmost concern was to secure an endorsement at all costs. The lawyers wanted someone who could help their clients make a final and confident business decision, informed primarily by an operational risk assessment.
As already discussed, there is a degree of epistemological nuance here. Could Jurassic Park operate safely, and how could that be truly assessed in the most competent way possible?
While these were the pertinent questions, they had little to do with the investors’ concept of operational risks. They merely wanted to know if Jurassic Park could avoid becoming uninsurable, and if so, how.
As novel as Jurassic Park was, Cowan, Swain and Ross had been around dangerous and complicated projects before. Some lawyers still had contacts. After much deliberation, they selected their own candidate for the endorsement team.
Their selection, James Oak, was a seasoned safety engineer with over twenty years of experience in the field. His background was immaculate: a graduate of MIT, he had consulted for several high-profile construction projects, including dams, refineries, offshore oil platforms, and major earthworks programmes.
Oak certainly had impressive qualifications, and a reputation for top-notch expertise in hazard control, fire protection, and redundancy systems. Maybe most importantly in this context, he had experience with accident investigation, which was the decisive element that drew the attention of the law firm.
In effect, they envisioned a double responsibility for him - not just to offer his own assessment of operational risks in Jurassic Park and whether they could be ameliorated, but also to report back to the firm about the dynamics of the Morales incident, and the responsibility of those involved.
Of course, most of Oak’s professional expertise related to the petrochemical and construction sectors; certainly nothing that involved live animals about which so little was known. But he was well-positioned to give the investors what they were looking for: an answer that focused primarily on risk.
Naturally, as any safety engineer must, Oak also had an understanding of the relevant legal environment - but that alone would not be enough. One of Cowan, Swain and Ross’s own attorneys would have to ultimately oversee and document the proceedings.
This was needed, not only from a legal and fiduciary point of view, but also to marry Oak’s feedback to a deep and professional assessment of the future insurability of the park.
Unbeknownst to Hammond, the fledgling endorsement team had its second and third prospective members. But more was brewing, as the key figures with a stake in InGen’s success reacted to the crisis now facing Jurassic Park.
Wu, Muldoon and others were starting to form their own ideas. And, with the vacuum created by Hammond’s absence and the lawyers’ efforts to recruit Oak, they had the time and breathing space to plan their move. (6)
Footnotes:
(1) I always find it very amusing how closely this mirrors the discussions I occasionally read about the books and movies themselves. It was very fun to imagine how much further they could be spun off, in a world in which the project was a reality rather than just science fiction.
(2) “Moonshot” is a term for a risky-investment startup that doesn’t just have a business idea, but aims to provide a world-changing product or service, typically tied to a new groundbreaking technology.
(3) The term first appeared in a Forbes article in 1976.
(4) For reference, just Magic Kingdom at Disney World draws 57,000 people a day.
(5) The same firm as in the books.
(6) I’ve mentioned in the past that I have approached the question of the endorsement team like a speculative exercise. Rather than focus on characters, I have focused on which actual professional backgrounds would be useful in this context, and more importantly, which ones would be sought after depending on the priorities of the decision-makers.
As I’ve said in the past, none of the characters from the books/movies’ endorsement team are going to be included in B&A, and while there’s a myriad of reasons for that, this is one of the most important ones. I wanted to approach this as a relatively clean slate, so that the story could evolve organically and follow logically from the premise, rather than be railroaded in a specific direction.
Another thing worth noting is that after so much buildup in terms of InGen’s internal structure, some of the chickens are starting to come home to roost. Hammond is no longer the only, hegemonic player in town.
The combination of the extremely complex financial and operational realities of the park, and the absolute centrality of figures like Wu or Muldoon, has created a situation where different camps inside InGen are battling over the composition of the endorsement team and, by extension, the future of the park.
While it was predictable that the lawyers and Hammond would have diverging priorities, what Hammond is perhaps not expecting is initiative and autonomy from within.
That’s what we’ll be looking at next week.