Building Moonshots: 50+ Ways to Turn Radical Ideas Into Reality - Hardcover

by Tamara Carleton (Author), William Cockayne (Author)

Solve the world's biggest problems and create a better future

In Building Moonshots: 50+ Ways to To Turn Radical Ideas Into Reality, a team of expert innovation strategists delivers an exciting and insightful collection of strategies, techniques, and frameworks for scaling your next big, audacious idea into a concrete product or service.

Each proven and tested strategy contained in the book has been categorized to make it easy to find and implement when you need it most. You'll learn how and where to start, when to bet big, how to invest, when to play the long game, what to communicate, and much more. You'll also find:

• Ways to go beyond white papers and vision statements to a place where your ideas become a tangible reality
• Strategies for creating a better future by transforming seemingly impossible ideas into concrete products
• Methods for bringing to life radical and innovative solutions to the world's greatest challenges

Destined to become the seminal, go-to source for visionaries, gamechangers, and leaders imagining the apparently impossible and determined to achieve it, Building Moonshots is a can't-miss book for entrepreneurs, founders, product development heads, and other business leaders.

Front Jacket

In Building Moonshots: 50+ Ways to Turn Radical Ideas into Reality, two veteran innovation strategists deliver the seminal, go-to source for visionaries, gamechangers, and leaders seeking to imagine and achieve the seemingly impossible. In the book, you'll learn how to develop a bigger and bolder vision as you pursue ground-breaking goals that transform the fantastical into the feasible.

The authors demonstrate over 50 ways to build radically innovative solutions to the world's greatest challenges and create a better future. You'll learn where to start, when to bet big, how to invest, what to communicate, when to play the long game, and much more. These 50+ ways serve as an indispensable primer for new moonshot teams and a handy refresher for seasoned leaders throughout the long innovation journey--for anyone leading, funding, or championing moonshot work at startups, government agencies, family offices, companies, foundations, and industry associations around the world.

The book offers a curated, actionable collection of practices and examples directly relevant to radical innovation. Numerous moonshot examples are featured from a range of industries, government agencies, military defense, and more that show how teams are making their moonshot visions and big ideas as real as the ground you're standing on.

As more people wish for radical new solutions to global society challenges, this book illuminates the path to the world-changing power of moonshots through a proven set of 50+ ways. Whether you need inspiration or a hands-on textbook to the disruption class you always wanted, Building Moonshots gives leaders and teams the courage, belief, and know-how to turn the stuff of science fiction into reality.

Back Jacket

PRAISE FOR BUILDING MOONSHOTS

"Building Moonshots is a much-needed resource for our era of uncertainty. Taking swings at the world's most intractable problems will never be easy, but Tamara and Bill have assembled a variety of practical tips, stories, and reminders to make the journey less onerous. Put this book in your backpack next to your audacity, bravery, and determination to leave the world 10X better than you found it." - Astro Teller, Captain of Moonshots, X, Alphabet's Moonshot Factory

"Today, more than ever, we need radical solutions to the world's most pressing challenges, using unconventional thinking and breakthrough technologies. This book shows us how. It is a must-read for leaders who seek to think big and achieve big." - Fred Swaniker, founder of African leadership Group and one of the "100 Most Influential People of 2019" by Time Magazine

"Moonshots drive innovation. Like the eclectic car, the camera phone, and AI machine learning. We need more books like Building Moonshots that offer actually actionable insights to teams who are serious about radical innovation." - Philippe Kahn, inventor, leader, and serial entrepreneur

"This is a how-to book for the innovation oriented. The authors understand the innovation process in great depth and help you to write the script and stage the play so that remarkable things can start to happen. Want to move into this space? This is your guidebook." - William B. Bonvillian, MIT lecturer and author of Advanced Manufacturing: The New American Innovation Policies

"Investing in game-changing ideas can get tricky, and Building Moonshots is an amazing resource for anyone looking to improve their chance for success." - Amin Ojjeh, investor, Marcho Partners; founder and director, H.O.P.E.

"Tamara Carleton and Bill Cockayne have written the seminal handbook for radical innovation. This book should be in the lab, on the desk, and in the hands of anyone intent on making big ideas real." - Mike Zyda, ACM Fellow, IEEE Fellow, Senior Member of the National Academy of Inventors, and a National Associate of the National Academies

"Building Moonshots has the rare combination of practical wisdom and deep insights that a forward-looking leader needs - today and tomorrow - to take their business to the next level." - Walter Brenner, Professor of Information Management, University of St. Gallen

"Tamara Carleton and William Cockayne are the rock stars of innovation. In this book, they condense years of teaching innovation to hundreds of students into a compact diary of 'how to do it'. These 50 ways to hit the moon are subtle but brilliant!" - Ted Lewis, former executive director, US Center for Homeland Defense and Security

"There's more than enough talk today on various flavours of disruptive innovation. Building Moonshots goes beyond by providing a unique set of practical frameworks that help you connect the dots... and see new ones. For anyone who has experienced one of Tamara and Bill's classes or workshops, you will find that same inspiring energy shining through each book page." - Oliver Haas, senior advisor to Magpie Aviation

"The book builds on the exceptional research that Bill Cockayne and Tamara Carleton did at Stanford University, and Building Moonshots is tangible evidence that crazy ideas can become REAL." - Larry Leifer, Emeritus Professor in Mechanical Engineering, Stanford University

"Bill was our moonshot guru at Stanford, when I was a student there. This book with his longtime partner Tamara is like a distilled version of our favorite class with Bill." - Max Serebryakov, co-founder and CEO, Sanas

Author Biography

TAMARA CARLETON, PhD, is an international expert in radical innovation. She is the CEO of Innovation Leadership Group, teaches at several top-ranked business schools and technical universities around the world, and is the creator of practical tools that help teams innovate, like the Playbook for Strategic Foresight and Innovation.

WILLIAM COCKAYNE, PhD, is a techno-optimistic leader with a passion for transforming science fiction into reality. For twenty years, he taught students at Stanford University how teams imagine, invent, and ship the future. He is an expert in converting blue-sky thinking into brass tacks.