How Google Built a Moonshot Factory — And How You Can, Too | Astro Teller (Captain of Moonshots at X, The Moonshot Factory)

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How do you build a system for turning wild ideas into world-changing innovations? Astro Teller, Captain of Moonshots at X, The Moonshot Factory, has spent over 15 years leading Google’s audacious innovation lab—the birthplace of Waymo, Google Brain, and other breakthrough projects.

In this special episode, recorded live in Austin at SXSW, Astro shares the playbook to create a moonshot factory.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode:

• 🐵 The “Train the Monkey First” approach to innovation

• 🚀 Why audacity, humility, and intellectual honesty are key to moonshots

• 💡 How your org can get more 10x (not +10%) outcomes — and how to avoid the “innovator’s dilemma”

• 🔴 Why you should “greenlight everything” and then redlight most projects quickly, following kill criteria you’ve agreed to in advance

• 🌍 Where X is placing bets today, including climate-tech, modernizing the electric grid and bioengineering

Episode Highlights:

• 00:00 Introduction

• 02:12 "Greenlight everything!"

• 03:22 Redlighting is the real work: how to do so quickly and effectively

• 06:21 "Train the monkey" — start with the hardest problem

• 11:00 Diverse teams are more creative

• 13:45 The "factory" — and why that metaphor matters

• 15:17 I try to hire Astro to build a moonshot factory for my 200yr old company

• 19:25 Avoiding the innovator's dilemma

• 22:00 Where X is investing today: bioengineering, modernizing the electric grid, and more

• 24:00 Why biology and engineering are merging

• 27:00 "AI will be in everything, but it's not the solution to everything"

• 28:00 Solving the climate crisis: Astro's optimistic take