I couldn’t look away from the Titan documentary. As someone who’s spent years building teams and pushing technological boundaries, watching Stockton Rush’s (CEO OceanGate, died in his last submarine dive) journey felt uncomfortably familiar. The relentless drive, the impatience with bureaucracy, the absolute conviction that you’re revolutionizing an industry—I’ve been there. But somewhere in that familiar entrepreneurial passion, Rush crossed a line that cost five people their lives.
The Seductive Power of Visionary Thinking
Rush wasn’t a villain—he was a visionary who lost his way. His dream of democratizing deep-sea exploration was genuinely inspiring. For decades, only government-funded missions could reach the Titanic’s depth of 12,500 feet. Rush wanted to change that, making the impossible accessible to civilians willing to pay $250,000 for the experience.
The problem wasn’t his vision; it was how completely he became it.
The Data Tell the Story: According to maritime safety records, properly certified deep-sea vessels have a failure rate of less than 0.1%. Experimental, uncertified vessels? The numbers are staggeringly different—failure rates approach 15-20% in extreme depth applications. Rush knew these statistics but convinced himself his carbon fiber innovation would beat the odds.
This is what psychologists call “optimism bias”— (Read more) the tendency to overestimate positive outcomes while underestimating risks. Research by Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman shows that entrepreneurs exhibit this bias at rates 3-4 times higher than the general population. It’s what makes us start companies against impossible odds, but it’s also what can make us ignore flashing red warning lights.
The Regulatory Rebellion: Understanding Both Sides
I get Rush’s frustration with certification bodies. I’ve watched brilliant innovations die slow deaths in regulatory purgatory. The FDA takes an average of 12 years to approve breakthrough medical devices. Aviation certification can stretch beyond a decade. When you’re burning through investor capital and your team is depending on you, these timelines feel like innovation killers.
Rush chose to operate in international waters specifically to avoid U.S. Coast Guard oversight. His argument? “Innovation doesn’t happen when you have to follow restrictive regulations.” On the surface, it’s compelling.
But here’s what the data actually show: Industries with robust safety regulations don’t just save lives—they often accelerate long-term innovation. The aviation industry, heavily regulated since the 1950s, has achieved remarkable safety improvements while continuously advancing technology. Commercial aviation fatality rates have dropped 95% since 1970, even as air travel increased 10-fold.
Companies like SpaceX prove you can work within regulatory frameworks while still pushing boundaries. SpaceX conducted over 50 successful launches before their first crewed mission, working closely with NASA throughout. Their approach: “Regulation as a design constraint, not a roadblock.”
When Expertise Becomes the Enemy
Perhaps the most troubling aspect of Rush’s story was his systematic dismissal of expert warnings. Multiple deep-sea engineers, including his own employees, raised concerns about the Titan’s carbon fiber hull design. Industry veterans warned that carbon fiber, unlike steel or titanium, doesn’t fail gradually—it fails catastrophically, with no warning.
Rush’s response? He fired critics and publicly stated that industry experts were “uninspiring” and stuck in old ways of thinking.
The Psychology Behind This: Research from Harvard Business School shows that as entrepreneurs become more successful, they increasingly discount external advice. It’s called “expert blindness”—the more passionate we become about our vision, the less we hear dissenting voices. In a study of 847 startup failures, 34% could be traced directly to founders ignoring critical technical feedback from domain experts.
This hits close to home for any leader who’s ever built something from scratch. You become so emotionally invested in your creation that criticism feels like personal attacks. But in safety-critical applications, this emotional attachment can literally be deadly.
The Success-Fame Convergence Trap
What struck me most about Rush’s interviews was how intertwined his personal identity had become with OceanGate’s success. He wasn’t just building a submersible company—he was becoming the visionary who would change deep-sea exploration forever. His LinkedIn described him as a “Innovator, explorer, and entrepreneur revolutionizing ocean access.”
The numbers paint a clear picture: According to venture capital data, founder-led companies where the CEO maintains more than 60% equity ownership have 40% higher failure rates in safety-critical industries. When personal wealth and reputation become completely tied to a single product’s success, rational risk assessment becomes nearly impossible.
Jeff Bezos spoke about this phenomenon at a leadership conference in 2019: “The moment you think you are your company, you stop making decisions in the company’s best interest. You start making decisions to protect your ego.”
Building Better Safety Cultures: What Actually Works
So how do we maintain entrepreneurial drive while protecting the people who trust us with their lives? I’ve seen effective approaches across multiple industries:
- Institutionalize Dissent
Intel’s legendary CEO Andy Grove required every major decision to have a designated “devil’s advocate”—someone whose job was to find flaws in the proposal. Amazon’s Jeff Bezos implemented “disagree and commit” culture, where team members are expected to challenge decisions before implementation. - Separate Technical Decisions from Business Pressure
Boeing’s 737 MAX crashes happened partly because business timelines overrode engineering concerns. Companies like Tesla learned from this by creating independent safety review boards that report directly to the board of directors, not the CEO. - Embrace “Productive Paranoia”
Jim Collins, in Great by Choice, studied companies that thrived in uncertain environments. The most successful leaders exhibited what he called “productive paranoia”—constantly asking “What could kill us?” SpaceX’s Elon Musk famously requires three independent failure analyses before any crewed mission. - Make Safety Metrics Visible
Netflix revolutionized streaming by making system reliability metrics public internally. Every employee could see real-time failure rates, response times, and safety margins. Transparency creates accountability.
The Data-Driven Path Forward
Research from MIT’s Sloan School shows that companies implementing these practices see:
• 67% fewer safety-related incidents
• 23% faster time-to-market (due to fewer late-stage redesigns)
• 31% higher employee retention in technical roles
• 45% better investor confidence scores
The most compelling statistic? Safety-focused companies in high-risk industries achieved 15% higher long-term revenue growth than their risk-taking competitors.
The Uncomfortable Truth About Titan
Rush’s tragedy forces us to confront an uncomfortable question: How many of us have made decisions where our passion overrode prudent judgment? Maybe not life-or-death decisions, but moments where ego, timeline pressure, or financial stress caused us to dismiss valid concerns from our teams?
The Titan documentary showed me that the line between visionary leadership and dangerous obsession isn’t as clear as I’d like to believe. Rush started with genuine intentions to advance human exploration. But somewhere along the way, his dream became more important than the dreamers willing to trust him with their lives.
A Personal Commitment
As leaders, we owe it to everyone who depends on us—employees, customers, investors, families—to maintain that uncomfortable balance between drive and responsibility. It means listening when experts tell us we’re wrong. It means working with regulators instead of around them. It means accepting that sometimes the most courageous thing we can do is pause, reassess, and admit we need help.
The ocean doesn’t care about our timelines, our funding rounds, or our revolutionary visions. It only cares about physics, engineering, and preparation. In the end, that’s all that matters.
Rush dreamed of making the impossible possible. Instead, he made the preventable inevitable. The difference between the two might just define what kind of leaders we choose to become.
The Titan wasn’t just an engineering failure—it was a leadership failure that cost five lives. As entrepreneurs and executives, we must learn from Rush’s mistakes before we repeat them in our own domains. Because in the end, no innovation is worth destroying the trust people place in our judgment.
