Solve for x: Moonshot Thinking, Disruptive Forces, and giant leaps for innovation?
Posted By
Charlotte Holloway
13 February 2012
A quick word from me about the latest developments happening over at Google, which has seen the ranks of the internet innovation community all a-chitter-chatter. Google’s Solve for x (or just "< x >" for the mathematically literate amongst you) has the potential to be big, and I mean really big, and the scope and ambition deserve a moment’s pause. Google < x > describes itself as ‘a forum to encourage and amplify technology-based moonshot thinking and teamwork’.
So, what exactly is this questionably termed ‘moonshot thinking’? The Google answer is that moonshot thinking is an approach that takes on global problems, defines radical solutions, and incorporates some form of breakthrough technology with tangible possibility of making them happen. There are three important questions that embed this thinking into every Solve for X talk:
• Does it highlight a huge problem?
• Is there a concrete solution that could make a radical impact?
• Does it explain breakthrough science and technology that could enable this solution?
The format itself presently takes the form of snappy and engaging TED-style talks outlining these three components. Take a look at, for example, this one of my favourites amongst those posted so far. Mary Lou Jepsen speaks in the clip below on Imaging the Mind’s Eye, highlighting how such advancements would “completely transform everything from how we communicate across language barriers, save our memories, replay our dreams, how we communicate with ourselves (psychology), how we communicate with computers (HCI), and on and on the list goes”:
Despite the Arthur C. Clarke quotes and mentions of science fiction littered across the site, the Jepsen clip brings home that the reality of such advancements are accelerating toward us, and that taking such pictures could be made possible within the next ten years.
We work closely with Google UK and our other partners from across the innovation ecosystem to start thinking about how the UK can unleash the potential that comes from the new wave of accelerating advances in technologies and platforms, through open innovation and multi-disciplinary collision. Our Disruptive Forces series, kicking off later this month, is designed exactly with this in mind. We will be examining how successful innovation will emerge collaboratively across industries, through the creativity emerging from the coalescence of thinkers from science, manufacturing, design, digital media industries and beyond. Indeed, new knowledge on the impact of these advances can be used to make practical recommendations for the social, financial, regulatory and infrastructure ecosystem necessary to make the UK a global innovation hub. Similarly, our Big Futures series, launching in April 2012, has been designed to share and open up – through events, online media and other platforms– big picture narratives about innovation, ideas and technological transformations.
It remains to be seen whether Solve for X marks the spot or not; but it’s a welcome addition to the idea that bold and radical thinking about shared problems and accelerating technological capabilities can change lives for the better. There are certainly all kinds of ethical, legal, economic and many other ramifications involved, but nevertheless, this approach to major shared problems is not going away.
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