A framework of "First Principles" thinking
First principles thinking drives complex problem solving through reverse engineering or deconstruction. It came into media attention in 2002 when Elon Musk began his journey to Mars. As such, Musk initiated his research and found out that space rockets cost an ridiculously high amounts of money, such as: $40, $50, or even $60 million for single use rockets. Hence, Musk started thinking on "What really can a rocket consist of? What are its components?"
As a result he used this physics framework to start from first principles, and he asked, if I break apart a rocket into individual components, what’s really there?
Eventually, SpaceX was born out of Musk's first principles thinking. Whereby, after lots of prototyping & testing, they quickly cut the price down to about 10% of the existing space rocket price.
Reasoning from first principles requires breaking down a problem into its fundamental building blocks, asking questions, getting down to the basic truth and most importantly separating facts from assumptions, subsequently, constructing a view from the grounds up. A simple break-down of first principles is illustrated on the below noted snap:
Placing first principles thinking into action can enable a better decision making via:
- Breaking down the platform into its core features, essential components of basic parts.
- Gain context & identify the objectives
- Challenge the assumptions & Back-up through evidence
- Explore implications
- Come up with possible solutions
Literally, entrepreneurs and organizational managers need to understand that the truth of yesterday may not be the reality today. They need to have a look of the world through a new lens by exploring new possibilities. It’s clear that businesses that tend to fail do not apply first principles reasoning. Instead, they worry about their competition, stick to their old recipes that got them initial success and fail to notice the signs demanding a new way of thinking!
