This reminds me of an article I read about a competition, to see who the first person was to build a human-powered plane. http://www.fastcodesign.com/1663488/w

This reminds me of an article I read about a competition, to see who the first person was to build a human-powered plane. http://www.fastcodesign.com/1663488/wanna-solve-impossible-problems-find-ways-to-fail-quicker http://www.fastcodesign.com/1663488/wanna-solve-impossible-p... Similar to what the OP is saying, the engineer realized that human powered flight wasn't the problem he was solving, but the process of failing fast and iterating.