Backcasting & Reject the Premise
Stand in the future you designed and look back — don't forecast forward from today's constraints.
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- Time to result
- ~weeks to results
- Steps
- 3
- Confidence
- 92%
Forecasting stands in the present (an extension of the past) and asks what obstacles lie between here and the future — which drags the past forward and produces incremental thinking. Backcasting inverts it: you vividly imagine a wildly successful future five years out, then look back and ask what you did to make it happen. Paired with 'reject the premise,' it unshackles thinking from the status quo so you can design a radically different future rather than disrupt an existing one.
Origin
Backcasting is credited to Mike Maples of Floodgate. 'Reject the premise' is a category-design principle; the 'thinking wrong' variant is credited to designer John Bielenberg, who has university students design an un-ridable bicycle.
Core principles
- 01Your point of reference is everything — thinking about thinking is the most important kind of thinking
- 02Forecasting anchors you to the present, which is an extension of the past
- 03'Disrupt' is a trap: if you're disrupting something, your reference point is that thing, i.e. the past
- 04Rejecting the premise opens the aperture for radically different futures
- 05Legendary entrepreneurs are 'visitors from the future' designing a different future, not extrapolating the present
How to run it
- 1
Reject the premise
Deliberately reject everything about the way things currently are — all of it. Forget what you know and start fresh so the past can't constrain the design.
Pro tip John Bielenberg's exercise: design a bicycle with exactly one rule — it cannot be ridable. Removing the 'must be ridable' premise forces radically different thinking.
- 2
Vividly design the 5-year future as if it exceeded expectations
Imagine you're five years out and everything has gone incredibly well. Brainstorm concretely: what technology are you selling, what are you doing for customers, how big is the company, how many people did you hire?
- 3
Look back from that future to the present
Standing in that designed future, ask: what did we do to make this different future happen? Reconstruct the path backward rather than projecting forward from today.
Watch out Forecasting ('what do we need to do to get from this present to that future, and what obstacles are in the way?') is great for a backcountry hike but an 'intergalactic disaster' for a startup — it re-anchors you to the past.
In the wild
On a multi-day Sierra hike you sensibly plan from a fixed start point to a known exit with waypoints and rationed food — pure forecasting. Lochhead uses this to show that the same method, so smart for a hike, is disastrous for a startup because it makes the present (an extension of the past) your reference point.
→ The analogy clarifies why founders must switch from forecasting to backcasting to escape incremental, past-anchored thinking.
Designer John Bielenberg runs a multi-week university exercise with a single constraint: design a bicycle that cannot be ridable. His 'thinking wrong' philosophy removes the obvious premise to open students to radically different possibilities.
→ Stripping the core assumption expands the aperture for legendary new thinking — the same mechanism as 'reject the premise.'
Common mistakes
Framing your work as 'disrupting' an industry
Saying 'we're going to disrupt insurance' makes the existing industry your reference point — and that reference point is the past. Dragging the past forward guarantees more incremental, less exponential thinking.
Doing incremental-better while believing it's exponential-different
Many founders unknowingly build something incrementally better and fight for existing demand and market share. That, Lochhead argues, is why most entrepreneurs fail; you can fail at exponential-different too, but only it leads to meaningful success.
Is it for you?
Best for
Founding teams at the vision/strategy stage trying to design a genuinely new future rather than a better incumbent
Not ideal for
Operators optimizing a proven product roadmap where disciplined forecasting and prioritization are exactly what's needed
From the transcript
“he calls it backcasting as distinct from forecasting.”
“That's how you unshackle yourself from the past.”
“design a bicycle. That's the objective. And there's only one design point. It cannot be ridable.”
“the greatest entrepreneurs are visitors from the future telling us how it's going to be.”
From the episode
How to become a category pirate
Christopher Lochhead (author of Play Bigger, Niche Down, Cat