Building Moonshots

WAY 23Plan for Targets to Evolve: Being willing to revise your goals as you experience success helps you to accelerate.

About the Way

Mention any groundbreaking technology—such as CRISPR Cas‐9, quantum computing, mRNA, or fusion power—and the conversation invariably turns from when it should emerge as a stable platform to what the solutions might ultimately look like. However, developing a moonshot solution is not as straightforward as a typical new venture, such as an app startup that can rely on lean startup practices, design sprints, or other tools to quickly confirm “product‐market fit.” Instead, moonshot teams must take a more open approach to defining and achieving their goals, because they rarely have a precedent to mimic. Although progress reviews are not new in strategy planning or project management, moonshot leaders and teams must deliberately adjust as they go, knowing targets will change from the original plan.

A good case of evolving targets are carbon nanotubes, which are nanoscale hollow tubes composed of carbon atoms. First discovered in 1952, carbon nanotubes made the leap from the lab to usable technology by the early 1990s. Multiple teams began exploring ways to produce carbon nanotubes in quantities that could be shared with others, leading to wild dreams of their uses. MIT Technology Review noted by 1999 that “these first steps provide compelling evidence that it is possible to build working nanodevices—and they have begun to generate considerable hope ...