FWIW, Elon Musk famously kiiiiiiinda had a theory-of-change/impact before starting SpaceX. In the biography (and the WaitButWhy posts about him), it notes how he thought about funding a smaller mission of sending mice to Mars, and used a material cost spreadsheet to estimate the adequacy of existing space travel technology. He also aggressively reached out to experts in the field to look for the “catch”, or whether he was missing something.
This is still nowhere near good red-teaming/proving-his-hunch-wrong, though. He also didn’t seem to do nearly as much talking-to-experts knowledge-base-building for his other projects (e.g. Neuralink).
FWIW, Elon Musk famously kiiiiiiinda had a theory-of-change/impact before starting SpaceX. In the biography (and the WaitButWhy posts about him), it notes how he thought about funding a smaller mission of sending mice to Mars, and used a material cost spreadsheet to estimate the adequacy of existing space travel technology. He also aggressively reached out to experts in the field to look for the “catch”, or whether he was missing something.
This is still nowhere near good red-teaming/proving-his-hunch-wrong, though. He also didn’t seem to do nearly as much talking-to-experts knowledge-base-building for his other projects (e.g. Neuralink).
And most groups don’t even do that.