In his autobiography 'Wings of Fire', A.P.J.Abdul Kalam, himself an ISRO rocket scientist & program director who later became a highly popular President of India (he draws crowds to this day, several years after office), quotes Gen. Patton: "A good plan violently executed right now is far better than a perfect plan executed next week." That could well summarize the ISRO style.
Kalam also highlights the leadership-by-open-discussion style of Vikram Sarabhai and Satish Dhawan who successively headed ISRO in its formative years. If that sounds commonplace, bear in mind this was in a civilian government organization of the 1960's. People like Sarabhai (a Cambridge Tripos and inheritor of a family business empire) and Dhawan (a double PhD in math and aerospace from Caltech) could have played the part and been overbearing - but they deliberately chose to build a "startup culture" where people were encouraged to speak up.
Yes. "Wings of Fire" is an excellent book; a must read. Also, if anyone's interested in knowing about ISRO's origins, their "hacker culture" etc. then I recommend these two excellent books: "A Brief History of Rocketry in ISRO" by PV Manoranjan Rao, P Radhakrishnan; and "India's Rise as a Space Power" by Prof UR Rao. These two books give an excellent overview on how ISRO was started (starting from INCOSPAR, TERLS, Sounding rockets, Rohini, Aryabhata, SLV, ASLV, PSLV, INSAT, to GSLV Mk3).
Kalam also highlights the leadership-by-open-discussion style of Vikram Sarabhai and Satish Dhawan who successively headed ISRO in its formative years. If that sounds commonplace, bear in mind this was in a civilian government organization of the 1960's. People like Sarabhai (a Cambridge Tripos and inheritor of a family business empire) and Dhawan (a double PhD in math and aerospace from Caltech) could have played the part and been overbearing - but they deliberately chose to build a "startup culture" where people were encouraged to speak up.