Moonshot Entrepreneurship

Entrepreneurship used to be all about hustle and profit. If you could develop a product that delivered a return on your investment, you had succeeded. But today, entrepreneurs are dreaming bigger, and delivering profit in itself is no longer as appealing as delivering profits with a purpose.

Elon Musk, the visionary behind Tesla and Space X, is a perfect example of this. His “Master Plan, Part Deux” blog entry outlined his priorities for the next ten years, which included “Enable your car to make money for you when you aren’t using it,” and “Expand the electric vehicle product line to address all major segments.” Simply making money is not enough for Elon, which is why he is the perfect example of a Moonshot Entrepreneur.

Google coined the term “Moonshot” to describe their most ambitious goals, which must “solve a huge problem,” propose “a radical solution,” and use “breakthrough technology.” This is the new standard for entrepreneurs today. Businesses and organizations everywhere are catching on, honoring Moonshot Entrepreneurs through awards and recognitions like the World Economic Forum’s “Schwab Foundation Social Entrepreneur of the Year” award, Unilever’s “Sustainable Living Young Entrepreneurs Award,” and Forbes’s Change the World list. The financial sector is also smelling an opportunity, as impact investing through Social Impact Investing” or “SRI” funds becomes more and more popular.