Building Moonshots

WAY 30Share Proofs of Concept Early and Often: Putting the impossible into customer's hands lets you own their hearts and minds.

About the Way

A proof of concept (POC) is a common tool across science and engineering fields, built to determine the feasibility of an idea and help verify its practical potential. POCs are usually intended as small tests that package part of the breakthrough for easier sharing. A POC helps confirm a team's assumptions, such as: Does our vision make sense to people? Do our assumptions hold? (A POC cousin is the proof of principle study, often conducted in early‐stage drug discovery and development.) A POC is intended as an illustration, not implementation, of a vision, which means that parts may be deliberately left incomplete.

POCs are excellent tools for moonshot work because teams can use these prototypes to elicit feedback from early adopters and simultaneously build support for a vision. Early adopters are an ideal audience for POCs because they are much more willing to forgive functionality gaps or product glitches. Early adopters are often eager to be involved with new ideas and can become enthusiastic influencers for a team's vision, too. Moreover, when actively shared, a POC helps to invite reactions from others about a big idea, giving valuable input to the leaders and inventors on which parts of the vision resonate and why.

As a moonshot team considers early adopters, they should sweep their own inner circles first—especially if they work ...