Elon Musk: First-principles thinking is the key to building things as efficiently as possible. “I tend to think of things from a sort of physics standpoint, from a first-principle standpoint. What would be the best way to accomplish something and then pursue that. And that's also a good way to determine if something's far from its optimum. And like on rockets, for example, you could reason by analogy and say the rocket's going to cost a certain amount because that's what prior rockets have cost. Or you can say, well, what is a rocket made of? What are the material constituents? What do they weigh? What's the cost per unit mass? And that sets the limit asymptotically for what a rocket can be. So if you can figure out some creative way to rearrange those elements into a rocket shape, then you can achieve a much better outcome. That's the first-principles approach.” From: Interview at Vanity Fair, October 8, 2014