A Moonshot is an extremely ambitious goal where achieving 70 percent already counts as success. The rationale: if a team aims for tenfold growth and reaches sevenfold, that is significantly more than if it had set a 20 percent target from the start. Moonshots are intended for transformative goals, not for things that absolutely must be achieved at 100 percent.
The distinction from the Roofshot is critical in practice. A Moonshot like tenfold growth in two years releases creative energy because it cannot be reached through incremental measures and forces the team to think fundamentally differently. A Roofshot like 20 percent growth is more realistic and more binding, as 100 percent achievement is expected. Good OKR sets combine both: Moonshots for strategic breakthroughs and Roofshots for business-critical commitments. Without this distinction, confusion arises about which goals are binding and which serve as stretch targets.
The term traces back to Google’s OKR culture and is inspired by John F. Kennedy’s 1961 announcement of the moon landing. Importantly, Moonshots must never be tied to compensation, because otherwise nobody will formulate ambitious goals.
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