Companies are to society what medicine is to a biological system. Building a company is then not dissimilar to the process of developing a vaccine. Hear me out.
We start with a problem or ailment we are trying to solve. Convenient transportation. Coronavirus. Then we build up a hypothetical solution. Accessible taxicabs. Traditional vaccines. Next we test our solution. Limo driver service. Protein based vaccine. Receive feedback. Need more drivers. Proteins ineffective against viral infection. We iterate, and innovate. Peer to peer ride-share marketplace. RNA based vaccine.
The process is far less about a good idea, and much more about testing. This is great news because we already have a scientific method for how to iteratively test ideas. There’s a reason why despite the most rigorous proofs, mathematical theories don’t become laws until proven empirically through experimentation. Theoretical elements aren’t added to the periodic table until discovered (often synthesized in a particle accelerator these days). We never truly know if something works until we try it in real life. We can’t predict every problem that may occur but testing an idea automatically shows you what the problems are and what the advantages are.
It’s so much harder to imagine every possible problem that may occur, but testing reveals every real problem that does occur.
It also means that getting started is the best and only way to validate an idea. And the process of refining an idea is less like trying new ideas until one works, and more like gradient decent towards the best answer. So spend more time testing and experimenting, and less time theorizing. Build the product, and test in the market, because you can never predict what works and what won’t.