I have been mulling this over since I brought it up in the last thread. I think we need to separate "idea thinking" into two camps. First, there is the type of

I have been mulling this over since I brought it up in the last thread. I think we need to separate "idea thinking" into two camps. First, there is the type of thinking you do when you don't have a lot to go on. I call these 'linear' ideas. These are where all that matters is moving your needle from 0 successful businesses to 1 successful business. Your idea doesn't have to be great, it just has to have potential. Second there's the type of thinking you have to do to avoid wasting your time on something with not enough potential. When you're trying to get as close as possible to Facebook-like potential, anything less is personally not really worth pursuing. I call these 'scalar' ideas. I think one has to decide first which kind of enterprise you're seeking to build, then to align oneself with the right type of thinking for that kind of enterprise. For linear ideas, testing your assumptions with hard data is paramount. For scalar ideas, you're not going to find the validation you're looking for until the world is beating down your door. To make a scalar idea work, you have to have a keen understanding of where the world is going, in the Zuckerberg fashion of "I think social is going to blow up". You're not adapting your enterprise to your current market, you're adapting it to the world at large. Could you imagine if Zuck had just kept chasing the college crowd, trying to capture more and more college students rather than open it up for everyone? I find there to be a lot of parallels between thinking about big ideas and thinking about design, probably why Apple does so well as the first "design-first" company. With both, you're focused on driving distinctions into elements that most people would simply overlook. How do you craft an experience? With design. How do you craft the future? With an idea.