Shoot For The Moon
Shift from Consumption to Production
The hype surrounding the launch of the next iPhone, Star Wars movie, or video game system used to make me feel like humanity is going to the moon once every fiscal year.
How many millimeters thick will the next iPhone be?
How many Death Stars need to be destroyed before the Empire realizes it just doesn’t work?
Will Lara Croft be realistic enough to replace my girlfriend?
My adrenal glands surged with consumer-driven excitement, like the buzz a sheep gets while being sheared.
I was in a cycle of, “What’s the latest product on the menu for me to try? How will Steve Jobs and George Lucas make me happy? Will George Lucas ruin my life. Again?”
That’s No Moon
How excited do you feel about the latest micro-advancements in smartphone features? What about apps that apply 1980’s photo filters to your amateur-hour cell phone photo? Do you feel existential satisfaction at the latest Snapchat update that features the ability to finally overlay anime eyes onto your selfie?
If you are riveted, fulfilled and excited by these advancements, you are winning.
And it’s never been easier to be a consumer.
If it doesn’t, and you’re upset and you know you want more, and you’re still focusing on what you can get out of someone or something, you might be looking in the wrong place. Or, maybe you are focused on a finger that’s trying to point you in the right direction…
Bruce?
“It’s like a finger pointing away to the moon. Don’t concentrate on the finger or you will miss all that heavenly glory.”
What’s Your Moon?
While it’s the easiest it’s ever been to be a consumer, it’s also never been a better time to be a producer. A Creator.
We can take an idea, a conversation, and turn it into a usable product or service with unprecedented speed.
One day soon, I imagine life might look like this:
I wake up and eat a 3D-printed organic breakfast while I design an X-Wing Starfighter in Augmented Reality. When I’m done designing it, I send it to a solar powered 3D printer orbiting Earth. This 3D printer will build the X-Wing with materials mined by autonomous drones from a near-earth asteroid.
When the X-Wing is done printing and the AI is done creating a custom operating system for me, I will pilot it with my Oculus Rift. All this, right from my standing desk! Just Kidding. Kind of…
Billions
Earth-changing opportunities exist in finding a way to use technology to solve big problems for large groups of people. If you’re feeling unsettled and unamused by microsteps in technology, heed your creative call and shoot for the moon. Peter Diamandis, founder of XPRIZE, says it best:
“You want to be a billionaire? Find a billion-person problem.”
Head over to http://www.xprize.org for inspiration. This is where Virgin Galactic began, and where ordinary people are pushing humanity forward by thinking bigger than we’ve ever thought to think.
Infrastructure, transportation, healthcare, water, education, space travel, food — all of these systems are in disarray and crying for help. Is there one system on this planet that works without complaint? In those complaints is opportunity.
What problem will you solve?