If you are trying to improve the performance of existing operations in known markets, it is an analytical problem where it's just a question of aligning your execution engine in the right way. If it is about creating something new and different, you can't derive the right answer analytically.

We fool ourselves into thinking that the spreadsheets that capture our financial projections are something different than what they are.

I've never seen impeccable logic be sufficient to win both the heart and the mind.

Document, evaluate, focus, test.

The reality is sometimes markets don't exist for very good reasons. It might be that there isn't a deep customer need. Or the economic model is just hard to pull off. Or maybe there is a regulatory barrier.

You still want to be thoughtful about what you do, no doubt, but you have to learn through trial-and-error experimentation as well.

It would be fun too to put some of the great philosophers and political scientists of the past couple centuries into a time machine, have them look at the world today, and see what they think. Imagine Schumpeter, Malthus, Hobbes, Nietzsche, Marx, and more! That would be good fun.