Introduction

This book focuses on how the world moves forward in huge leaps, built by the hard work of visionary teams. From our backyard of Silicon Valley to our time spent working with pioneering organizations in the world's innovation ecosystems-pick your list, and we will introduce you to an amazing team there-we have had a front seat into the many ways to imagine, invent, and deliver a radically better future. We have taught at the world's leading research universities and business schools, huddled with young teams pursuing outsized visions, and advised teams and leaders across the Global 1000 and six continents. Across all this work since the 1990s, the same questions keep surfacing, which we can shorthand as: are there proven ways to do this?

Moonshots are a class of innovation that drives humanity forward. We realized there is a need to collect the stories, share the examples we use regularly, and capture the questions that teams should ask themselves, all in their pursuit of how to build moonshots. In our goal to explain the how-to to teams, we realized it wasn't just a quick list of the best practices or a double-clickable process to follow. There is not one canvas for these types of radical ideas. Instead, there are numerous ways that have proved successful across different types of organizations seeking to go big, some of which relate to adopting a moonshot mindset, inventing what does not yet exist, and making the big bets. Which led us to 50+ ways for building moonshots. The world needs moonshot solutions more than ever, which can only happen when people like you imagine, invent, and build your big dreams.

Moonshots Change the World

Humans have long been fascinated and motivated by imagining the almost impossible, then making it happen. This class of innovation is often described as moonshots. Although the term's origin refers to literally going to the moon as the world's first lunar landing-a giant leap for mankind following government decree as part of the US Apollo spaceflight program-a moonshot today has come to signify much more than this type of big government project.1 Moonshots are world-changing breakthroughs. It couples the almost impossible vision-to one day land on the moon-to the actual achievement. A white paper isn't a moonshot. A vision statement isn't a moonshot. History tells stories about the teams who make big ideas real.

Moonshots are a special class of problem that fall under coordinated complexity. Moonshots mix long-range planning with grand scale, so understanding how to imagine, develop, and achieve these big ideas requires both knowledge of the long term and knowledge of producing extraordinary outcomes. Moonshots are not simply user-led or consumer-driven solutions. Moonshots require passion. They demand visionary leadership. What others view as unapproachable risks become a smart bet. In essence, a moonshot is an almost impossible vision with world-changing impact. Moonshots are distinctive for these three underlying elements:

• Almost impossible. A moonshot has an unknowable path at its start, which feels ambitious and extraordinary. Various moonshot definitions describe the executional challenge of this near impossibility, using phrases such as "pressing societal challenges," "intractable," and simply "hard to do." Based on what is known at the time, delivering that moonshot requires new knowledge and/or the invention of new technologies, often called as breakthroughs and typically shifting a current paradigm of thinking or doing in society.
• Vision. A moonshot presents a bold vision of what the future should be, which guides actions into achievement. When people describe moonshots, they use words such as lofty, bold, visionary, or radical to capture the magnitude of the vision. What makes a moonshot exceptionally big and hard is that it has not been tried before, so few, if any, precedents exist. The moonshot vision unites a team and sets the expectation that the moonshot will take time to build.
• World-changing. A moonshot creates the possibility for great change. A moonshot outcome is meant to be tremendous, making a better future for humanity, not just outrageous returns for only the investors. Bluntly, this means that many unicorns-startups with billion-dollar valuations-are not moonshot worthy. You often hear the expected scale of moonshot impact noted in grand terms such as exponential, 10X, transformational, disruptive, abundant, or a billion people. The moonshot teams involved have the intention to build and see the value of making their moonshot happen for society.

Frankly, all types of innovation are essential in propelling humanity forward, whether they are called grand challenges, earthshots, longshots, loonshots, or another name. As part of the overall innovation mix, moonshots matter because they pull people out of operational mode, creating a lasting paradigm shift. "But that's impossible ." is a superb starting point for moonshot opportunities. As science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke put it once, "The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible."2

A Big Need for Moonshot Knowledge

In recent years, a growing number of groups have announced major efforts in pursuing, funding, and promoting innovation that focus on moonshots. As some offhand examples, these groups include Schmidt Futures, Alphabet's X the moonshot factory, and the Melinda and Bill Gates Foundation in the United States; the UK's Advanced Research and Invention Agency (ARIA) and the Royal Foundation of The Prince and Princess of Wales in Europe; and Japan's Science & Technology Agency and Yamauchi No 10 Family Office in Asia. Across organizations like these, there is no available go-to guide for building moonshots, which highlights more ways to achieve results beyond standard practices.

As we personally heard this need in our own circles, the growing volume of requests finally tipped us to make the time to write the book we know should exist. We deliberately take a positive and constructive tone, framing the work of moonshots and providing a rich reference list on what a team can do and how to do it. In this book, we often alternate between referring to moonshot leaders and moonshot teams as shorthand for the type of people who are pursuing a moonshot. We expect our readers' roles to range like the moonshot groups themselves, as many of you will be involved in government agencies, family offices, internal corporate units, new startups, foundations, associations, and more.

A shared thread across all these moonshot roles is the commitment to go bigger. This belief is foundational for the hard work of moonshots. Simply, the power of bigger thinking helps teams to move outside of their comfort zone and start seeing more possibilities ahead of them. In turn, this mindset shift helps to raise their ambition, and as the team's confidence and belief grow, they see that they can do things that they didn't think they could do before. When teams think bigger, they also ask more of themselves. They try harder and reach further because they feel part of something greater that they are directly responsible for creating. This affirmation provides its own reward, keeping teams motivated on a moonshot's long journey, because they know they are changing the world.

As important, the world needs this moonshot knowledge. From our experience teaching at different universities and other school programs these last few decades, the youth especially want to change the world-and often don't know where to start. They want a reliable source that encourages more "anything is possible" dialogues on how to solve the big challenges they see, as well as giving them actual tactics to make change happen. This book is their open door to finding a community of kindred spirits, especially others like them with all the wonderful hell-bent energy that youth tend to bring.

Why 50+ Ways

This book combines more than 50 different ways for building moonshots. Why this set of ways? Because these ways emerged from repeated questions that we heard in our circles, their extended networks, and across broader calls related to making moonshots real-when leaders and teams became serious and moved past the talking and dreaming and wanted to know how to really do it.

We call them ways because they describe a recognizable set of related activities and principles, often with corresponding tools and guidelines that have been developed and refined over years of experience. You can find examples of ways in action across history, which offers additional durable evidence on how to practice them in different contexts. At Stanford University-where we have run a summer moonshots program for several years-undergraduate students can choose nearly a dozen courses from a core set of "Ways of Thinking/Ways of Doing" that are foundational to Stanford's general education.3 Other organizations in industry and the public sector we know have introduced ways of working that embody their unique organizational approach.

We prefer not to use the term best practice for these 50+ ways, because what is best for some groups is not necessarily best for all....