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The First Principle Thinking : Building Blocks of True Knowledge

The First Principle is something that I use a lot in the product and design process. This can really help to drill down the problem and find out a unique creative solution.

First-principles thinking is one of the best ways to reverse-engineer complicated problems and unleash creative possibilities. Sometimes called ‘reasoning from first principles’, the idea is to break down complicated problems into basic elements and generate an original solution.

The first principles approach has been used by many great thinkers and inventors like inventor Johannes Gutenberg, John Boyd, the ancient philosopher Aristotle, Elon Musk, and more. Elon has used and using the philosophy of first principles thinking more effectively then anyone did. (I am the Big fan of Elon)

In 2002, Even before the sale of PayPal, Musk started reading about rocket technology and later that year, he started one of the most unthinkable and unimaginable rocket company called SpaceX. The purpose of SpaceX was to revolutionize the cost of space travel in order to make humans a multi-planetary species by colonizing Mars with at least a million people over the next century. Wow.. A dareful effort.

When Musk originally looked into hiring another firm to send a rocket from Earth to Mars, he was quoted prices as high as $65 million. He also traveled to Russia to see if he could buy an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), which could then be retrofitted for space flight. It was cheaper, but still in the $8 million to $20 million range.

This image is a Real image of SpaceX Falcon 9 launch.

“I tend to approach things from a physics framework,” Musk said in an interview. “Physics teaches you to reason from first principles rather than by analogy. So I said, okay, let’s look at the first principles. What is a rocket made of? Aerospace-grade aluminum alloys, plus some titanium, copper, and carbon fiber. Then I asked, what is the value of those materials on the commodity market? It turned out that the materials cost of a rocket was around two percent of the typical price. (From — “Elon Musk’s Mission to Mars,” Chris Anderson, Wired.)

Reasoning by first principles removes the impurity of assumptions and conventions. What remains is the essentials. In practice, you don’t have to simplify every problem down to the atomic level to get the benefits of first principles thinking.ou just need to go one or two levels deeper than most people. Different solutions present themselves at different layers of abstraction. In the above example, Elon hasn't chosen to buy mins for raw materials and process them to make useable, and then make rockets from them.

How to drive innovation using the First Principle Thinking

The First principles of thinking can be easy to describe, but quite difficult to practice. One of the primary obstacles to first principles thinking is our tendency to optimize form rather than function. The story of the suitcase provides a perfect example.

In ancient Rome, soldiers used leather messenger bags and satchels to carry food while riding across the countryside. At the same time, the Romans had many vehicles with wheels like chariots, carriages, and wagons. And yet, for thousands of years, nobody thought to combine the bag and the wheel. The first rolling suitcase wasn’t invented until 1970 when Bernard Sadow was hauling his luggage through an airport and saw a worker rolling a heavy machine on a wheeled skid.

Story from “Reinventing the Suitcase by Adding the Wheel,” Joe Sharkey, The New York Times

The First principles of thinking do not remove the need for continuous improvement, but it does alter the direction of improvement. The First principle thinking sets you on a different trajectory. ‘Five Why’ is also having a similar approach to drill down the problem statement.

Share what you think on the First Principle. Share your example and experience if you have using the First Principle.