Moonshots Named to Kirkus Reviews’ Best Books of 2018

Entrepreneur Naveen Jain is leading disruptions today that will reshape the world—and beyond. From redefining civilian space exploration to creating a path to free energy to reinventing healthcare and education, Jain is at the forefront of the exponential technology developments that will forever change how we live and work. In Moonshots, Jain reveals the secrets of the “super entrepreneur” mindset—the catalyst for creating an exciting and abundant future. He then walks readers through the application of these powerful concepts in three moonshot initiatives that he is leading today—one of which is Moon Express, a private lunar venture that promises to open up the moon’s vast resources for the betterment of humanity, while another, Viome, is working to eradicate chronic disease at its very source. In Jain’s world, the term “moonshot” is meant both literally and figuratively! Journey with Jain through these illuminating pages and awaken your own moonshot potential. It’s a discovery that will change your life—and quite possibly the world.

The AudioBook edition of Moonshots is narrated by NPR’s Scott Pollack and features the segment bumper music of Laurence Juber—the former guitarist for Paul McCartney & Wings. Get it on Libro.fm!

Editorial Reviews

 Moonshots—a Closer Look

We will realize either the world we fear to imagine or the world we dare to dream. The difference maker? Whether we will operate from the collective mindset of scarcity and its insidious companion known as sustainability, or one of abundance and unlimited possibility. In Moonshots, Naveen Jain lays out urgent and compelling arguments for the latter as the only path for realizing an amazing, abundant, peaceful, and prosperous future for all of humanity. Can this be more than science fiction?

“Someone once asked me” Jain muses, “which science fiction technologies are not likely to become reality. I answered by saying that the question you should be asking is, what is it that science fiction has not yet imagined?” Indeed, the uniquely human qualities of curiosity, imagination, possibility, and an optimistic outlook comprise the cardinal points of the moonshot—the seemingly impossible entrepreneurial dream that shatters prevailing paradigms. That’s what a moonshot does: it challenges the very foundations of what everyone has simply taken for granted, openly defying the majority opinion that keeps us trapped in an inherently unsustainable and oppressive economic model.

Moonshots demonstrates that the true scourge of the world is a mindset of scarcity. “It is at the root of all the greatest challenges that humanity faces,” Jain says. “It is the direct cause of war, poverty, crime, disease, famine, hunger, illiteracy, a sense of hopelessness and helplessness, and nearly every other source of human suffering. And it is big business.”

Moreover, Jain shows that scarcity is not only the opposite of abundance, it is the opposite of imagination, possibility, optimism, and every other trait that marks a healthy mindset—the first step toward solutions. “If you want to eradicate poverty, for example,” Jain explains, “you must first eradicate the mindset that sustains it.”

In the face of such grand challenges, the moonshot entrepreneur dares to ask the big “what if” questions—dreaming dreams that are so big that people wonder if they might be crazy. “But what’s actually crazy,” Jain responds, “is the short-sighted incrementalism of linear approaches to problems of exponential proportions—and believing they’ll make any difference at all!”

In the end, well-meaning programs of sustainability serve to reinforce the value of scarce commodities. But there’s another problem: sustainability is actually not sustainable. The fact is we have to create more of what we need rather than consume less of what we have. Only entrepreneurs—leveraging exponential technologies—can do it.

Like so much else that is surprisingly counterintuitive in Moonshots, Jain shows that everything works backward: “We don’t invent answers, we reveal them when we discover the right questions. And we perpetually question our way forward. The fact is we are drowning in knowledge but thirsting for questions. Can we count on the experts to ask the right questions? I don’t think so.” Nor, Jain says, can we look to governments to solve the massive problems in the world.  This is why he believes the next set of superpowers is most likely to be entrepreneurs—entrepreneurs who are not waiting on governments to solve problems or address the things that they care about. “A government mired in gridlock wrapped in bureaucracy is the entrepreneur’s opportunity. Governments are not wired for responsive agility. Entrepreneurs are. As such, it is vital that entrepreneurs throw off the shackles of a mindset conditioned to believe that only governments can accomplish these large-scale objectives. We’ve got to invert the model. The status quo is not moving us forward, so we—the entrepreneurs—must subvert it.”

In the process, Jain challenges the core assumptions of not only sustainability, but of “settled science,” energy production, the healthcare industry, the education system, expert opinion, the established world order—even philanthropy. The key to it all? A mindset open to radical possibility. “We all begin life as a tabula rasa,” Jain says, “wide-eyed, taking in the world and making sense of it. Curiosity unimpeded, imagination unconstrained, creativity unhindered. Then the socialization processes begin. Our curiosity doesn’t die out, it is wiped out. Consequently, as would-be moonshot entrepreneurs, it’s likely that we’ll have a little rehabilitation to do.” Moonshots is the first and most vital step in that rehabilitation. Along the way, Jain exposes the real reasons why most people live far below their limits—as if they have any idea what those limits actually might be. Moonshots, therefore, seeks for nothing less than to awaken the virtually unlimited capacity of the human mind and its astounding potential to remake our world. A tour de force that brings a distinctly human focus to the amazing possibilities of exponential technologies, Moonshots takes readers on an awe-inspiring journey of emerging developments that span brain-computer interfaces to mining the moon for unlimited energy production; to making illness optional to reinventing education.

Indeed, technology has the potential to solve the world’s greatest challenges—but only when harnessed by a well formed entrepreneurial mindset, the ultimate platform for previously unimagined possibility.

Corrections to First Printing