Fusion Power by 2028? The One Quote That Explains Why It’s Actually Possible (And what you can learn about execution from it!)
What if the world’s hardest engineering challenge – commercial nuclear fusion – actually delivers electricity to the grid in 2028?
That’s the commitment Helion Energy just made with Microsoft.
Most people laughed. I stopped laughing the moment I heard David Kirtley, Helion’s CEO, say this on Lex Fridman’s podcast (#485):
“And what I’ve found is actually small, iterative, just building as fast as possible gets you there… way sooner than if you would have just started on one mega project and then waited decades to get the answer.”
→ Listen to the full episode here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1qO-XW9mQoQ (quote around 1:50)
Seven full-scale prototypes in rapid succession. Each one deliberately imperfect. Each failure a high-resolution data point that no supercomputer simulation ever revealed.
This isn’t just a fusion story. It’s the antidote to every transformation that dies in PowerPoint.
The real enemy of execution isn’t complexity – it’s uncontrolled variation. Variation in processes, customer behavior, team alignment, and technology compounds silently until your “24-month roadmap” becomes a five-year nightmare.
The CDX Method® emphasizes the same principle David articulated.
Force variation into the open by making the cycle time between intention and reality as short as humanly possible:
1–2 week learning cycles instead of 6-month phases
Revenue-generating pilots instead of 200-page business cases
Real customer data instead of best-guess assumptions
Every small, fast step is a collision with reality that exposes variation early – when the cost of fixing it is still measured in days, not millions.
Do this long enough and variation stops being something you fight. It becomes the signal you ride.
Helion turned a 70-year “never” into a plausible 2028 by refusing to let perfection delay learning.
You can turn your own “impossible” transformation into reality the same way.
So here’s my execution question to you:
What is the smallest real experiment your team could ship in the next 10 days that would force the hidden variation in your system into the open?