Building Moonshots

WAY 24Be Responsible Visionaries: Starting with a caretaker mindset means that your solution won't become a future problem.

About the Way

Although moonshot leaders and teams work furiously toward their launch, that is not their last stepping stone. Thinking long‐term requires building the moonshot foundation that extends beyond the launch (see Way 32: Build Foundations) and ensures some consideration of downstream effects. Moonshots have a long life and outsized impact, yet the topic of spillover effects is only lightly addressed in industry and higher education. Sure, a majority of MBA programs includes a required ethics course, and many engineering degrees raise the issue of secondary and tertiary effects, usually late in a semester, given that some bridges, airplanes, and other complex products will be used in ways that were never intended. Yet this understanding is unevenly applied to efforts of radical innovation.

A caretaker mindset has existed throughout history, though its popularity in the press ebbs and flows. One example we love comes from India, when in the late 19th century, industrial titan Jamsetji Tata built the steel and power industries for the nation, while also considering the broader benefits of his moonshot actions for society.¹ Tata pioneered worker welfare initiatives and introduced the concepts of hydroelectric power and a new world‐class educational institution that later becomes the Indian Institute of Science, considered the top university today ...