Arguing from First Principles might be one of the most crucial and powerful positions you can take when designing and building your product or service.
Wikipedia defines First Principles as “[…] a basic, foundational, self-evident proposition or assumption that cannot be deduced from any other proposition or assumption.”
Elon Musk puts this very eloquently in this short video; personally I find his example insanely great:
When he thought about batteries, conventional wisdom was that a battery costs 600 USD per Kwh. Applying first principle thinking to this product allows you to see that the raw materials which go into making a battery cost only about 80 USD per Kwh on the spot market. Realizing this allows for a radical rethink of how batteries are made and priced and led to Elon’s Mega Factory in Nevada.
This week — Why don’t you look at the assumptions you currently hold about your product and service and apply a healthy dose of First Principle thinking on them?