Wander Part III: What types of ideas should you capture when starting moonshots?
Part III for finding your next moonshot idea
We confess a good problem: we have been busy with multiple book talks lately. Now in this newsletter, we pick up on the mini-series about how to find your next moonshot idea.
Part III builds on the last two newsletter issues, which discuss the value of “walking when talking” and why who you’re walking with matters as where you walk. This third step moves your energetic conversation to a nearby whiteboard.
Part III: What type of ideas should you capture on a whiteboard?
As you and your walking partner are synthesizing and clarifying key points from your conversation, map the ideas that strike you most on a whiteboard nearby.
Here’s why. First, the act of capture matters. Capturing what you and your walking partner have talked about is equally important as the conversation because this action takes your idea another step closer to reality. Walking gets your body moving. Talking gets the idea moving, out out your heads and toward a shared understanding. Then capturing helps you visibly document this understanding.
Second, the whiteboard as a capture space matters. The whiteboard – or similar surface, such as a large flip chart, blackboard, or butcher paper taped up – offers a large space suitable for a team discussion. Unlike a personal notebook, which is largely a private and small space, a whiteboard signifies a collaborative arena. Big ideas deserve big spaces, mentally and emotionally, so starting with a whiteboard helps that.
On the whiteboard, see where your idea(s) sit on our Four Horizons model. We have mentioned this 4H model before (plus describe it in Way 2 of our Building Moonshots book), which plots a continuum from near term (horizon 1 or H1), midterm (H2), far term (H3), and beyond (H4).
Is your idea new to your organization, new to the industry, or new to the world? Crazy and impossible ideas can be placed at H4, while speculative, almost impossible ideas sit on the H4/H3 border. Nascent, emergent, and more improbable ideas are often H3 territory. If your idea falls more in H2, ask yourselves: should we go bigger? What would that mean for our vision?
This is the start of a moonshot journey!
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Wander and listen
This section highlights some examples of moonshot thinking and doing all around us and links them to specific Moonshot Ways from our Building Moonshots book. (Note that indented text highlighted by a blue line are direct quotes from each article.)
Bloomberg
October 3, 2023
Vivek Wadhwa’s New Venture Aims to Use Breath to Detect Cancer
Over the last five years Vivek Wadhwa, an entrepreneur and academic who’s well known in Silicon Valley, has been working on a longshot project to detect cancer in people using only their breath – similar to using a breathalyzer.
▶️ Moonshot Way 18: Be visionary
Wall Street Journal
September 12, 2023
What If Polyester Isn’t So Bad After All?
The petroleum-derived synthetic may also be the ultimate recyclable fiber... Why can’t we use our mountains of would-be landfill, rather than fossil fuels and other virgin resources, to make new clothes?
▶️ Moonshot Way 13: Start by asking what if…?
AXIOS
September 14, 2023
Gen Z's surprise optimism about the future
Gen Z's view of itself couldn't be more different than everyone else's view of Gen Z… 76% of Gen Z surveyed said “they have a great future ahead of them,” but just 44% reported feeling prepared for it.
▶️ Moonshot Way 6: Be an optimist
▶️ Moonshot Way 19: Get ahead of your customers
Tech Crunch
October 1, 2023
A tale of two research institutes
[Marc] Raibert ran the lab for 15 years. A number of future robotics luminaries would make their way through the program over the course of its existence…
▶️ Moonshot Way 40: Develop perpetual pipelines
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