Bad Ideas Are Not the Enemy — Blind Execution Is
We’ve been trained to worship good ideas.
A bad idea is not the opposite of a good idea.
It’s usually a good idea with:
the wrong timing
the wrong audience
the wrong constraints
or the wrong problem definition
Why Bad Ideas Matter
Bad ideas expose reality faster than perfect plans.
They collide with:
market resistance
technical limits
human behavior
cost and scale
Each collision leaves evidence. Ignoring that evidence is waste. Studying it is leverage.
What Is Back Engineering?
Back engineering is not reverse engineering a product. It’s reverse engineering decision-making.
You take the outcome and walk backward:
What assumption failed?
What signal did we ignore?
What shortcut looked harmless but wasn’t?
What part actually worked?
This process turns failure into a map.
Bad Ideas vs Untested Ideas
Some ideas are bad and most are simply untested.
Testing creates data and Back engineering turns data into insight.
Insight creates the next idea — usually a better one.
A Mental Shift
Instead of asking: “Is this a good idea?”
Ask: “If this fails, what will it teach us?”
That question alone changes how teams build, ship, and learn. Bad ideas are not mistakes. Unexamined failure is.