Reaching for the Stars: Embracing Moonshot Thinking

While India is talking about Chandrayaan-3 which is the third and most recent lunar exploration mission under Chandrayaan programme by ISRO, I thought to write an article around Moonshot thinking (inspired by the different articles I read around it).

“We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.”

— President John F. Kennedy

The term “Moonshot Thinking” was coined by John F. Kennedy in 1962 when he challenged the United States to send a man to the moon within a decade.

What is Moonshot thinking?

When we, today, talk about innovation, it actually covers two completely different approaches.

• The “traditional” one; i.e. continuing to develop and improve current products or services, and
• The “Disruptive” one; i.e. combining new technologies, new trends, behaviours and new business models — sometimes even in collaboration with new partners.

One forward-oriented approach that can help implement an innovative way of working is MOONSHOT THINKING.

Moonshot thinking refers to the act of setting incredibly ambitious, groundbreaking objectives that seem almost unattainable at first glance. It is about daring to dream big, pushing the boundaries of innovation, and taking bold leaps into the unknown.

At the core of moonshot thinking lies a willingness to embrace failure as an inherent part of the journey. Moonshots are not about achieving immediate success; they are about learning from failures, iterating, and persisting until the goal is achieved. Moonshot thinkers believe that even a partial success in their grand vision can lead to transformative breakthroughs.

One of the Ted Talk talk, I like about celebrating failure: Astro Teller: The unexpected benefit of celebrating failure | TED Talk

Examples of Moonshot Visions

Throughout the course of history, we’ve seen that when people set their minds to wildly ambitious goals, the seemingly impossible starts to become possible. Moonshot thinking is about just that — pursuing things that sound undoable, but if done, could redefine humanity.

Moonshot vision is an ambitious, groundbreaking product vision. A moonshot vision should feel audacious just as John F.Kennedy proclaimed to land the first humans on the moon.

Other examples of moonshot visions are:

• SpaceX (2002): enable human life on Mars
• Google (1998): organise the world’s information
• Microsoft (1980): a computer on every desk and every home

How IBM’s and HP’s mission statement are far from aspirational moonshot visions:

• IBM: To lead in the creation, development and manufacture of the industry’s most advanced information technologies, including computer systems, software, networking systems, storage devices and microelectronics.
• HP: We earn customer respect and loyalty by consistently providing the highest quality and value.

Recipe for moonshots

Anyone in any field can take a moonshot. Not all moonshots have to include a science or technology breakthrough. Most of moonshots sits at the intersection of these three ingredients:

• A huge problem in the world that affects millions or billions of people
• A radical, sci-fi sounding solution that may seem impossible today
• A technology breakthrough that gives us a glimmer of hope that the solution could be possible in the next 5–10 years

How to incorporate Moonshot Thinking in your work?

• Unleash Creativity
• Having a Multi-Disciplinary Team
• Limits Are Always Important
• Set Challenging objective
• Reward people