Earl Bakken, the co-founder of Medtronic and inventor of the first wearable external cardiac pacemaker, delivered a commencement address structured around five habits for success. His third habit — 'Ready, Fire, Aim' — was the most memorable, deliberately inverting the conventional wisdom of careful preparation before action. Bakken's own career was the ultimate proof of concept. The first pacemaker took only four weeks from concept to first use in a patient. The design wasn't perfect, but it worked — and it saved lives while competitors were still planning. Medtronic, which he started in 1949 with two people and earned $8 in its first month, had grown to over 31,000 employees and nearly $9 billion in revenue. The advice wasn't about recklessness — it was about the danger of over-analysis paralysis. In Bakken's experience, the cost of waiting too long to act was almost always greater than the cost of acting imperfectly. A flawed prototype in the field teaches you more than a perfect plan on paper.