We have reached a critical stage where what worked in the past won’t work in the
future. We have the technology to solve the problems, but we need a change in
human thinking and behaviour. How? Through Moonshot
thinking
— the combination of innovative technology and innovative thinking to solve a
challenging problem.
The power of both personal conviction and collaboration came through loud and
clear throughout SB’19 Madrid (Oct
17-18), with the need for personal drive towards common goals. When the
‘personal me’ and the ‘professional me’ combine, the mission is unstoppable.
50 years ago, the Apollo mission was an example of vision, co-operation and
openness — involving 400,000 scientists and engineers, and 20,000 companies.
With a mix of inspiration, emotion and revolution, SB Madrid attendees were
launched into their own mission of change, alongside innovators creating
game-changing engagement and overhauling global systems for the better.
A response to the climate emergency: Time to rebel
Extinction Rebellion's Andrew Medhurst | Image credit: Sustainable Brands
“We are a band of pirates,” was keynote speaker Andrew
Medhurst’s
rallying cry to attendees.
A new approach is needed to tackle today’s ecological crisis, according to
Medhurst, who, for his part, left his 30-year banking career to join Extinction
Rebellion — a non-violent, direct-action civil
protest against the climate emergency worldwide.
Medhurst claims Extinction Rebellion follows the tradition of civil
disobedience, citing Mahatma Gandhi and Rosa Parks. While described as
non-violent, the movement is willing to be disruptive and break the law to get
attention, as was evident in the latest International
Rebellion,
with 1,600 arrested at the London protest earlier this month.
By outlining the business and moral rationale to act, and giving the audience a
licence to rebel, SB’19 Madrid was off to a dynamic start.
Needed: More giant leaps for humankind
Jim Adams | Image credit: Sustainable Brands
If disruption is needed to gain attention, what is required to turn a Moonshot
into reality? During an onstage conversation with Quiero’s Sandra Pina,
Jim
Adams
— a retired NASA Deputy Chief Technologist — said NASA doesn’t actually use
the word “Moonshot,” because everything it does involves overcoming a major
challenge. However, he identified the key ingredients for Moonshot thinking:
“You need a clear vision and perseverance. While disruption is useful, you also need a group to do the work over a long period.”
Clear leadership is necessary to mobilise an idea into action. “With any new
idea, 10 percent will be against the change and 10-20 percent at the other end
will say, ‘Let’s move forward.’ 70 percent of people will be in the middle,
looking to see which way they should go. That’s where good leadership comes in,”
Adams explained.
He was visibly moved as he related the experience of President Johnson
visiting NASA and asking a janitor “What are you doing?” To which the janitor
replied: “Helping America get to the moon,” illustrating the leadership and
collective ambition of the mission. “It gets me every time,” Adams breathed.
Secret ingredients of an effective entrepreneurial mindset
Bas Van Abel is an award-winning social entrepreneur and founder of
Fairphone — an ethically made, modular phone.
The latest Fairphone uses Fairtrade Gold, recycled plastic and ensures fair
conditions for workers. What’s surprising is that Van Abel sold 25,000 phones
before he had even worked out how to make a phone.
Van Abel’s Moonshot thinking was to follow the phone from the ground — e.g. from
its mined components — to the end customer, and see how production could be
made more sustainable along the
way.
With the encouragement of a corporate order for 1,000 phones, Van Abel set about
finding a factory to make them. His request to the factory was: “We want to be
able to show how the phone is made and to improve working conditions.”
The next stage was crowdfunding, with a campaign offering people a more
sustainable phone within six months. 25,000 people bought the phone before it
even existed.
“It felt like flying a plane, when you’re still building it and you don’t know
how to fly,” Van Abel admitted. At one stage he thought he would have to give
everyone their money back. However, his wife encouraged him to continue; and the
first Fairphone was launched later that year. Eighteen months later, over 60,000
Fairphones had been sold.
What was his secret to success? “Firstly, be strategically naïve,” Van Abel
said. “Naivety is fine as long as you know you are naïve. Secondly, be
vulnerable — open up and show things. So, if there is child labour in your
supply chain, show it — but also show what you are doing about it.
“Finally, surface the dark matter — the things behind the product. If people have no understanding of the products they use, they will never change behaviour.”
Climate Take Back: Interface’s Moonshot to be carbon negative by 2040
Sometimes change comes from asking the right questions. 25 years ago, Ray
Anderson — CEO of commercial flooring manufacturer
Interface — famously asked a
single question: What are we doing about the environment? As a result, in
1994, Interface made a pledge to have zero impact on the planet by 2020. In his
Thursday keynote, Jon Khoo, Regional Sustainability Manager, UKIME and
Nordics at Interface, reflected on the benefits of setting ambitious targets.
“The goal allowed Interface to galvanise and inspire its employees. For example,
the R&D team found a way of fixing floors with less glue. The sales teams loved
being the carpet reps that wanted to talk about the environment.”
25 years of sustainable progress later, Interface is on track to meet its
target. But now it has a new mission, called Climate Take
Back
— a strategy to not only have zero impact but to work towards reversing the
effects of climate change. The aim is to make every flooring product carbon
neutral, either in production or by offsetting the balance, at no extra cost to
the customer. Khoo asked:
“If we can do this, why not make carbon neutral a standard? Why doesn’t
everyone?”
Interface has also developed Proof
Positive,
the first carbon-negative carpet tile. Using plant-derived carbon, this concept
tile actually prevents two kilos of CO2 going into the atmosphere. Still in a
pilot phase, the product is expected to be released to market in the next 12-18
months — proof that asking the right questions and being willing to use
imagination to find the solutions can turn a Moonshot into reality.
Un-doing and re-doing food in the age of empowered consumers
Friday afternoon explored ideas from two innovators determined to knock our
existing food system off its axis.
Honest Tea's Seth Goldman | Image credit: Sustainable Brands
“Over the course of its lifetime, a honey bee creates only 1/8 of a teaspoon of
honey. Likewise, one person doesn’t create enough change on their own; but if
you give people a chance to make a small change, it contributes to a larger
change,” began Seth Goldman, co-founder of Honest Tea and Executive
Chair of Beyond Meat.
Goldman is encouraging people to make a small change in their food
consumption
for the greater good. With increased access to information, consumers now have
greater power than ever, and are insisting on different options in-store. People
are moving away from mainstream food offerings, towards what Goldman describes
as “the un-doing and re-doing of food.”
The un-doing of food is about transparent sourcing and authentic ingredients.
Goldman created his first beverage, Honest T, because he was looking for a
healthy drink. He brewed five Thermos flasks of tea in his kitchen and took them
to his local Whole Foods store, and they agreed to take 15,000 bottles.
Honest T was the first organic bottled tea; the brand was sold to The
Coca-Cola Company in 2011.
Meanwhile, Beyond
Meat
— which has used proprietary science to redefine “meat” — is re-doing food. Meat
is essentially an assembly of amino acids (proteins), lipids (fats), water and
trace minerals, which are processed by an animal. Goldman asked: “What if we
leave the animal out of it? What if we use heat and pressure and cooling to make
meat?” In doing so, they created a meat alternative, which is skyrocketing in
popularity.
“We see an enormous expansion of retailers selling it in the meat section of the
grocery store. We are now reaching a much wider audience,” Goldman said.
“In the future, our kids will just ask, “Is it meat protein or plant protein?”
Foodshot Global's Victor Friedberg | Image credit: Sustainable Brands
“My personal moonshot started in Central Market, Valencia, Spain, in 2012. I
ate a peach and realised that the peaches I had eaten my whole life were a
shadow of this peach,” said Victor E. Friedberg, co-founder of S2G
Ventures and founder/Chairman of FoodShot
Global.
It led him on a journey to consider why this Spanish peach tasted better, and
the broader question of ‘What is food?’: “Food is nutritious and safe. If it
isn’t nutritious and safe, it isn’t food,” he concluded. “Between those two
words lies the entire frontier of food.”
A lack of safe and nutritious food is causing problems, he said.
“We are bankrupting our healthcare system with our food system. How can we create nutritious and safe food without damaging the planet?”
A moonshot for better food led to Foodshot Global and the idea to start from the
ground up — with
soil.
Soil, or the degradation of soil, is becoming a food security crisis. Soil is
the nexus between agriculture, climate change and nutrition. As more carbon goes
out into the air, it is pulled down into the soil, crowding out vital
nutrients.
“We need a new soil operations system (Soil 3.0) to sustain 10 billion people
and protect the planet,” Friedberg argued. “From healthy soil comes nutrition.
We need to change from a diet based on cheap calories to one based on affordable
nutrition.”
Another key focus is protein. The existing protein production system is
known to have negative impacts on the planet, leading to the rise of new protein
systems such as regenerative meat, cellular meat (like that produced by Beyond
Meat), fungus and fermentation.
“I believe that if we can get food and agriculture right over the next decade,
it will put us on a more peaceful path,” Friedberg concluded.
Getting moonshots off the ground
So, you’ve got a dream. A moonshot. How do you make it a reality? In interactive
workshops across both days, Friederike Riemer — Futur/io’s Co-Creation
Future Scientist — introduced the Moonshot Thinking framework from
Futur/io.
1. The Challenge
It’s important to be personally connected to the moonshot, so the framework
starts with an individual task. In the first workshop, the task was to imagine a
child you love, send them into 2040, and create a Future Human 2040 profile of
that child, now an adult — imagining their work, activities, biggest fear and
biggest dream. Then, identify a challenge they might face.
In the second workshop, which had an ocean theme, the personal question was,
‘What is your favourite ocean memory?’; followed by the challenge, ‘How might we
make fish a main protein
source
for people in a world where meat consumption is highly restricted by 2040?’
The next step is to create ideas to meet the challenge. Ideation 1 was silent
brainstorming. Ideation 2 then encouraged people to think through the lens of
someone else — e.g. a superhero or a brand. What would Superman do? How would
IKEA solve this challenge?
2. The Moonshot idea
Having come up with a range of ideas, the next step is to choose your Moonshot
idea. It must be relevant, hard to do, and breaking business as usual. If people
hearing the idea say it’s impossible, you’re on the right track.
3. The Moonshot mission
Building a Moonshot mission means transforming the idea into a mission, with a
measurable outcome. The Moonshot mission canvas helps to identify the
breakthroughs, measurements, community and deadline of the mission. With a
mission in place, you are ready for lift off.
How to create a massive, transformative global movement
Finally, the energetic Jack Sim — founder of the World Toilet
Organisation (WTO) and BOP Hub — wowed the crowd with a humorous and
inspiring video that showed his passion for providing toilets for all.
“If I see a problem, I try to think of a solution. If I can’t think of a
solution, it’s not my problem. If I can think of a solution, it becomes my
problem,” Sim said, admitting that this gives him a lot of problems. However, he
exhorted: “Everything can be done if you get other people to do it. Mutual
exploitation is collaboration.”
This particular problem is a lack of access to sanitation for 2.4 billion
people. Open defecation spreads disease; diarrhoeal diseases — a direct
consequence of poor sanitation — kill more children every year than AIDS,
malaria and
measles
combined. One billion toilets are
needed,
but there is no supply.
So, Sim created the WTO, and then leveraged hard.
“You can make a change with no resources. You just have to use other people’s resources. Figure out how to align your interests with the interests of someone else, to get a win-win situation.”
For example, to persuade governments to build more toilets for female workers,
he told them they were missing out on taxes because women earned less money if
they had to queue for the toilet at work.
His successes include the creation of a UN Official Day, World Toilet Day, on 19
November. He created the World Toilet Summit in 2002 and now gives hosting
rights to cities every year for $50,000. Indian Prime Minister Narendra
Modi’s ‘Clean India Mission’ built 110 million toilets for 600 million people.
With his infectious enthusiasm and toilet humour, Sim closed the event with a
standing ovation.
Get the latest insights, trends, and innovations to help position yourself at the forefront of sustainable business leadership—delivered straight to your inbox.
Published Oct 22, 2019 8am EDT / 5am PDT / 1pm BST / 2pm CEST