Imagine a logo of one of your favorite brands. More likely than not, it has changed slightly over time, but maintained some elements about it, as if it is on an evolutionary path. Rarely, if ever, is the brand and logo wholly re-invented to look and feel different.
Now there are many branding and marketing reasons for this having to do with brand recognition and goodwill, but it’s a great metaphor for when this type of effect happens in other areas of our everyday lives.
Once an idea is first introduced it often mutates and grows from that first introduction and rarely if ever gets readjudicated or reasoned back from first principles to reimagine it. In this way, the idea is like a tree that once planted, only has one “trunk” and is rarely if ever “replanted”.
I call this “The Idea Tree”.
This concept is a form of idea entrenchment or conceptual path dependency. Both terms describe how ideas, once established, tend to grow and branch without returning to their roots for reevaluation.
Ideational inertia is another way to think of this concept, which borrowing from physics, when objects are in motion, they tend to continue along their established paths unless acted upon by a force (such as critical reassessment).
In either case, without “replanting” ideas, they often keep expanding from a single, possibly outdated “trunk”. This is why reimagining from first principles (and other heuristic thinking methodologies discussed later) are so valuable.
Idea Entrenchment
Idea entrenchment describes the process by which ideas become firmly established and resistant to change. Once an idea becomes entrenched, it’s often taken as a given and rarely questioned, leading people to build upon it without re-evaluating its initial assumptions. This can occur due to familiarity, tradition, confirmation bias, or even from heuristic shortcuts themselves.
Changing foundational ideas requires significant effort.
In psychology and sociology, this concept is linked to cognitive rigidity, where thinking patterns become fixed. In organizations or societies, entrenched ideas might lead to institutional inertia, where the established ways of thinking or acting persist even if they no longer serve the original purpose.
The Remedy
So what’s the remedy for this? We can look to mental shortcuts, ideas from a heuristic way of thinking to occasionally reimagine from first principles – but another method is to occasionally ask yourself: what could we stop doing, start doing, or change?
This is often referred to as a “stop-start-continue” analysis. This framework is widely used in personal reflection, team retrospectives, and strategic planning. It prompts a person to reevaluate their current actions, identify new opportunities, and retain valuable practices, making it a powerful tool for breaking entrenched ideas and routines.
When paired with reimagining from first principles, stop-start-continue can help a person systematically identify areas for improvement or innovation, creating a balanced approach to rethinking entrenched ideas that have gained ideational inertia. It offers a structured way to question and adjust practices without the overwhelming task of reinventing everything at once.
Revisiting from first principles and the occasional stop-start-continue analysis can help teams and individuals see whether their initial “trunk” of an idea tree still aligns with current goals or whether “replanting” could yield something more impactful.
However, you may find that some ideas do not need to be revisited, but still do get revisited due to a lack of institutional knowledge or a bias against established systems and processes. We’ll cover that in the next chapter.
This is chapter 1 of Think Again, available on Amazon Kindle.