Even in engineering-driven Silicon Valley, the buzzwords of the moment call for building a lean startup that can adapt and evolve to an ever-changing environment. Would-be entrepreneurs are told that nothing can be known in advance: were supposed to listen to what customers say they want, make nothing more than a minimum viable product, and iterate our way to success. But leanness is a methodology, not a goal. Making small changes to things that already exist might lead you to a local maximum, but it wont help you find the global maximum. You could build the best version of an app that lets people order toilet paper from their iPhone. But iteration without a bold plan wont take you from 0 to 1. A company is the strangest place of all for an indefinite optimist: why should you expect your own business to succeed without a plan to make it happen? Darwinism may be a fine theory in other contexts, but in startups, intelligent design works best.

Zero to One by Peter Thiel