First Principles Thinking: From Foundational Truths to Revolutionary Solutions
When Elon Musk approached the challenge of building rockets at SpaceX, he didn’t accept the conventional wisdom that rockets must be expensive. Instead, he broke down the problem to its fundamentals: What are rockets made of? What makes them costly? This approach led SpaceX to revolutionize space travel economics, reducing launch costs by over 90%. This is the power of first principles thinking – the ability to strip away assumptions and rebuild solutions from foundational truths. ...