“If you want to do something really innovative, you have to apply a sort of first principles analysis. And don’t reason by analogy. Analogies are referencing the past. First principles mean you look at the most fundamental truths in a particular arena, the things that really are almost indisputably correct, and you reason up from there to a conclusion. And if you see that that conclusion is at odds with what people generally believe, then you have an opportunity. You can’t operate like that on all things, because it takes too much mental horsepower, so most of your life, you have to operate by reasoning by analogy, but if you really want to innovate, you must reason from first principles to identify the problem.” - Elon Musk”