Avoiding along some dimensions is easy. Create organization space and bring in some new talent so the innate cultural resistance is less material. Unfortunately, it's rarely that easy.

I find social media as fun and engaging as the next person, but imagine if all the creative talent that was pouring into finding increasingly clever ways for us to broadcast daily banality (and then serve ads based on what is learned) instead focused on some of the UN Millennium goals? The world would be a better place.

I think it is only in hindsight that you can determine whether something is a mistake or not.

Of course, it is worth it to take the time to think carefully through your assumptions, and ensure you at least have hypotheses around how you will create value. But use the analysis as a way to focus attention on the most critical assumptions, rather than spend a ton of time massaging the numbers.

Hollywood Joohn Tatum? He does at least 6,000 sit ups and 10,000 pushups a day!

First you document your idea. You should be comprehensive, but that doesn't mean you have to produce a doctoral thesis length plan. Rather you want to make sure you have touched all the different things that have to happen to succeed. Then, you evaluate your approach. The goal here isn't to figure out if your idea is good or bad, but rather to begin to figure out what are some of its weakest elements.

Good innovators are careful observers, network extensively, run experiments, ask lots of questions, and find ways to bring diverse ideas together. Overarching all of this is an intrinsic interest in working through puzzles.