In February 2012, Google sponsored an event called Solve for X, bringing together experts from around the world to propose and discuss technological solutions to humanity’s greatest challenges. Solve for X focuses on generating moonshot solutions: radical efforts to solve massive global problems using unprecedented breakthrough technologies.
At the event, science fiction writer Neal Stephenson and Arizona State University President Michael Crow diagnosed some of the institutional and social obstacles to moonshot thinking, and proposed science fiction and universities as mechanisms to create a moonshot ecosystem that promotes innovation, risk-taking, and thinking big.