This post is written by Melodena Stephens, professor of innovation at Mohammed Bin Rashid School of Government, Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

  • **The problem: **Moonshots are regularly announced but to work, they need more strategic input.
  • Why it matters: Unplanned moonshots can quickly lose momentum, leading to a loss of credibility, dilution of purpose, poor impact in the public value space or loss of trust.
  • The solution: Understanding the context, the purpose and outlining the long-term strategy (resources like talent, finance, partnerships) will help achieve moonshots.

The ‘Moonshot’ launched into prominence after President Kennedy’s agenda to put the first man on the moon. The moonshot has since come to mean a futuristic mission that needs breakthrough innovation. While the Kennedy administration spearheaded the initial moonshot, it was a massive partnership between the government, private sector, research institutions, and academia. It was estimated that more than 400,000 people (around 94% of them contractors) were involved in getting the first man on the Moon and back.

Today there are many enterprises larger than governments in terms of revenue, people, and reserves. Hence the ‘public value’ space that the government traditionally managed is now shared with the private sector. Google added one more nuance to the definition of moonshot, with an emphasis on addressing a huge problem.

A moonshot is a mission-oriented project designed to get a competitive advantage in the global landscape, revitalise and channelise the science, technology, and innovation ecosystems, and unleash the economy. If done well, it should lead to spillovers that last decades.

The key elements to a successful moonshot are outlined below.

1. Mission-oriented policy and overarching purpose

Where are you, and where do you want to be? You need to understand the context (Where are you) in terms of resources and capabilities. The ‘Why’ is your Agenda Setting. The ‘When’ is your time frame.

A moonshot is a purpose-driven project to attain a goal in a specific timeframe. It understands the state of affairs and the resource commitment required. A policy with no resources, timeframe, and strategy has no teeth. Moonshots can be started by setting up an independent task force and research group with purpose or purposeful organisation. The independence of these units prevents politicisation of the process and loss of purpose. It will help with the governance of the process. The reporting structure allows agenda-setting.

NASA, which was created in 1958 as an independent US governmental agency, was formed in response to the USSR’s Sputnik satellite launch. Its earlier predecessor, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), an independent inter-departmental government agency, had been created by the US Congress in 1915 in response to World War 1. In this case, we see that NASA was not new but was an organisation with decades of experience in understanding research context, manufacturing and technology capabilities and transfer, and government affairs. In most cases, these task forces or research groups report to the highest level in the government (in this case, the President/Congress) and have a champion.

Another example of a moonshot is Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, an intergovernmental organisation set up in 2000 to shape markets and bring vaccine equity between developed worlds and under-developed countries. It had a strong champion in Bill Gates, and the seed funding was from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Its unique board structure brings to the table diverse stakeholders with vested interests, which they were able to channel towards their purpose.

2. Funding and trajectory

The analysis in step 1 allows you to find out your innovation gap. This enables you to plan for resources – financial, technology, and people. No moonshot is achievable without a strategic plan.

For example, when the EU decided they were lagging in quantum technologies, the European Commission announced the Quantum Technologies Flagship programme in 2018. As the third-largest research and innovation initiative in the EU, it had a commitment of €1 billion for funding research and innovation over the next 10 years. In 2019, EU members began signing a declaration to look at how to develop and deploy these types of technologies across the region. A working group, SRA-WG, of 50 people (20% industry and 20% female) was set up to provide input into the initiative's goals. In 2000, they issued a report titled ‘Strategic Research Agenda for the Quantum Flagship’ that inputted the views of over 2,000 European quantum experts during 18 months.

The EU already had an existing research community (estimated at more than 5,000 people), but the project was to increase networking and channel research into themes of strategic importance. In the case of the EU and some member committees, many of these initiatives and reports are open and easily accessible.

3. Teams

As seen with the above examples, moonshots are impossible unless you have a diverse team at the project's core. This needs to represent the ecosystem of players on the ground – people, expertise, education, economic actors, and political stakeholders who are required to champion the project. The team needs to put aside their inherent agendas, biases, and politics for a higher purpose. There needs to be a fail-safe and fail-learn culture. So even if the project does not work, the learnings can be used elsewhere, the IP created can be leveraged in another day, and the team is wiser!

4. Transparency

Many moonshot projects are funded by the military for security and defense reasons. This may raise flags in the international community and are clouded by secrecy that prevents trust (the main business of a government in generating trust and creating public value). One example is the controversy around the Gain of Function research, cross-border funding, governance, and its relationship to the pandemic.

5. Thrust

Many moonshots die prematurely because they do not have sufficient momentum to proceed forward. NASA’s early ‘Man on Mars’ programme is one such example. In response to the pandemic, in 2020, the UK government planned to fund £100 billion to carry out 10 million reliable home Covid tests per day. It is ambitious as the technology did not exist at that time (which is the purpose of a moonshot), but rather than rally diverse stakeholders, it resulted in fragmented expert opinions on why it would not work rather than why it could.

It was quickly shelved. Momentum needs a rallying cry: Why is this critical now over all other projects? It needs the buy-in of key stakeholders, and today the public is a key stakeholder. It also needs to be able to justify the resources required.

In 1969, NASA issued a report on putting a man on Mars in 15 years, but the growing confluence of the Department of Defense and NASA and decreasing justification for cost as the Cold War waned resulted in Apollo flights ending in 1972. However, the agenda of ‘Man on Mars’ has been revived in light of global competitiveness for space exploration.

Thrust comes from spillovers. It is vital to look at the impact on humans. Much of the basic research into vaccines that were used to fight the pandemic were initially based on government grants. To make basic research commercially viable, the private sector ecosystem plays a critical role. While ultimately, the economy does benefit, each individual who has a say in government or can vote would want to know what it means for me. When there is a perception that few benefit, the challenge for the government is justifying its choices. Moonshots work because there is a “whole of society” perspective. While moonshots are risky (the Moon mission lost a few astronauts and cosmonauts), the response, the spillovers of benefits, and pride in one’s country will sometimes make the costs easier to bear. Handling risk and loss in the right way is critical for managing the longevity of moonshots.

To sum up, moonshots work and should be planned by the governments and the private sector. However, to be successful, moonshots need to be managed properly.

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