Rocketstart is an app that helps with idea generation. It’s based on the “Moonshot – The Innovation Game” approach to innovation developed by Till Hasbach. To start, you create your own idea in the app. This is followed by various challenges that provide new inspiration for further development. The tasks usually take five to ten minutes and can be easily integrated into your daily work routine.

The challenges address different aspects of an idea. Sometimes they focus on the target audience, the specific benefits, or the underlying assumptions. Other times, they’re about shifting perspectives: What would a planet look like where everyone used this idea? Or what would Pippi Longstocking make of it?

The process is supplemented by AI. It provides feedback, asks follow-up questions, and picks up on individual thoughts. By the end, it becomes clearer which aspects are already fully developed and where there are still unanswered questions.

The app’s design is also playful. Each idea is represented by a small character. Its appearance changes as the idea is developed, and with each level, the stage of development becomes visible.

Our colleague Marcel first made contact with Till, the founder of Rocketstart, several years ago. empiriecom got to know him at our tenth Inno Day in November 2025. Once a quarter, our employees set aside time for their own projects and ideas and have the opportunity to try out new things. Till was invited as a guest speaker and presented his approach in his session “Moonshot – The Innovation Game”; a group of employees had the opportunity to try out the game remotely during that Inno Day.

We stayed in touch with him. Some time later, the opportunity arose to test Rocketstart at empiriecom as part of a beta test. Over several weeks, employees were able to test the app with their own ideas from their day-to-day work.

It was interesting for us to see the different paths each idea took.

Mouse tracking: an idea takes a new direction

One of the ideas tested initially focused on mouse tracking and data-driven product development. As the test progressed, the focus shifted more and more toward apps and gamification.

The challenges made it clear that the original idea could also be developed in a different direction.

EMP Guidelines: an idea takes shape

With the EMP Guidelines, the focus was on a different aspect. The main goal here was to organize thoughts, formulate the idea more clearly, and further develop individual aspects.

The feedback was positive. The app helped “bring structure to the idea and challenge it.”

Visual board: an idea is questioned

A third idea was a visual board for planning priorities and dependencies in projects.

An AI challenge fundamentally called this approach into question. The feedback was that the board probably wouldn’t solve the actual problem and that the root cause might lie elsewhere.

Of course, at first, that wasn’t exactly what we wanted to hear. At the same time, it raised an important question: Does our idea actually solve the problem we’re trying to solve?

Our experience with Rocketstart has shown that the outcome can vary greatly.

An initial idea can give rise to something completely new, it can become more concrete, or we may realize that we need to think in a different direction. Not every idea has to become a finished concept in the end. Even just having clarity about which path leads forward and which does not is a valuable insight for us.

One thought from Till’s session at Inno Day has really stuck with us: The problem isn’t that we lack ideas. Rather, we sometimes lack the space to really think them through to the end.

And Rocketstart creates that space. The challenges give ideas time and attention and help us discover what they’re really capable of.