Tools for Systemic Venture Building: Idea Maze

Published in

Metabolic Ventures

11 min readDec 14, 2022

Immersing in the idea maze to navigate system change

This article is part of a broader series about tools for systemic venture building. You can read our introduction or scroll to the bottom of the article to find links to other tools in the series.

Why the Idea Maze

“Good startup ideas are well developed, multi-year plans that contemplate many possible paths according to how the world changes.” — Chris Dixon

To build an organisation that aims to maximise impact and contribute towards system change — a systemic venture — a team looks for a critical role in a system that fills a critical gap and one in which they are uniquely positioned to play, and it builds on what is already there. Complex systems are evolving all the time and things constantly shift around us. A venture that might have been well positioned to create change at one point may become irrelevant as the system changes. This can be a risk to ventures delivering on their mission, and systemic ventures need methods to identify these potential shifts and map their reaction to them.

Balaji Srinivasan — investor, technologist, operator, and all-round smart guy — coined the concept of the idea maze; coming up with a good idea involves not only having a clear vision of where you want the company and product to go, but also understanding the landscape so well that you can think through many facets of the company in the future and how it will evolve based on the various possible evolutions of the system around you. Adapting the concept for the goal of systems change, the idea maze helps answer the key question for a systemic venture around their unique role in driving such change.

When a venture starts out, it needs velocity. Velocity = speed + direction. You need speed, but you also need to be pointing the speed in the right direction. Early-stage ventures are commonly encouraged to undertake sprints — lean startup style — and correct iteratively, perhaps weekly.

But when navigating complex systems and aiming to enact system change, you need some sort of larger rudder that guides your development — direction. The idea maze can act as the rudder, this map of the system that guides your sprinting in the right direction towards velocity. Ideally, you start the idea maze before you even start the company, and use it throughout your journey, in conjunction with a theory of change and role typologies that we outlined in our other articles.

How to build the Idea Maze

The idea maze is a unique, dynamic mental model of the system in hand. A founder needs to be the ultimate expert in their domain and have a dynamic view of the system; to do so, they need to immerse in the system (h/t to Jacqueline Novogratz). Building a solid idea maze involves working through different timescales — past, present and future — and leveraging different modes of understanding. This is quite a non-linear process that requires an iterative approach, looping around again with new insights.

In a way, the idea maze is a consolidation of a range of tools and methods which brings you to a mental model of the system and your evolving place within it.

Part 1: Understanding the Past

It’s quite instructive for ventures to have a grip on the past. For example, many futurists understand the past really well; typically, trends we see now have happened in the same way, just with a different context, some other time in the past.

1.1. Understanding key dynamics and evolution to date
What happened to bring the system to the point that it is now? To shape our enquiry we can ask: What were key breakdowns and key breakthroughs that shaped the system? We can look at technological, social, policy, and economic drivers of breakthrough and breakdown. You can gather this information from books, reports from leading organisations, and expert interviews: particularly entrepreneurs.

1.2 Critical ventures and initiatives driving breakthroughs and breakdowns towards today
To build the idea maze, venturers need to deeply understand the previous and current solutions, what specific approach they took, and why they did or did not work.

What were attempts to address this kind of problem or enact this kind of change that worked or didn’t work and why? What were their key characteristics?

Part 2: Mapping the Present

2.1. Understanding current dynamics: Lean system analysis

Analytics
One way to do this is to do a lean version of a systems analysis: the causal loop diagram and the simpler 5Rs analysis are both common, while others use a collection of smaller tools together such as connection circles. You can check out Systems Innovation Network, Unschools or Ashoka who all touch on this range of tools.

Theory / Expert input
You can also pull on theory, existing studies of the system, or interview experts and keep asking “why” to get to first principles — like a very smart, but at times annoying child would do (see the five whys).

Observation
A venture should not be based only on theory and analysis; it should also use observation from being in the field. This is partly about talking to people on the ground and studying what is going on more directly, as well as lean startup-like sprints that can drive speed toward stronger sensemaking.

The critical questions we should be looking to answer are the following:

What resources are flowing into and out of the system? What technological innovations? What funding? What talent, expertise and skills? What ecological and materials flows are there and in what quantities?
What critical roles are being played? Who are the main actors playing these roles and what are their characteristics? What are the relationships between actors and nodes? What are the power dynamics, financial relationships or social ties?
What are the rules of the game — both explicit (policy) and implicit (norms, mindset)? What is the current social climate?
What are the outcomes (results) that the system is producing?

2.2. Dynamic, lean, theory of change at multiple levels
Building a theory of change is a critical linking pin between the current state of the system, the future state the venture seeks to bring about, and the venture’s role in catalyzing that change.

A system-level theory of change identifies what the system or challenge needs and which pathways are most likely to create the change being sought. An organisational-level theory of change identifies the ventures’ role in driving the change (key to the next stage).

2.3. Building the landscape of ventures and understanding roles

Existing roles and models
Which ventures and initiatives have failed or succeeded, what are their offerings and features, business models, impact models, strengths, weaknesses, success, and failure factors?

The critical information to analyse are the key attributes of the existing initiatives — whether it be market segment, target users, features, business model and so on. Attributes can seem pretty vague but it’s intentionally broad — as we look at other initiatives we are likely to identify particular aspects of them we hadn’t thought about and that end up being quite critical forks for the venture. This will lead us to an idea of where there is a unique gap and role to fill, but equally where the critical forks in the road are for the venture to make decisions on in the future. You can look at this at 3 levels — ventures within the direct context (e.g. system, problem area, geography), similar concept with some different aspect (e.g. different geography), ventures in a different context with a core analogous feature in how it drives change that we can learn (e.g. something that successfully ‘reshaped market dynamics in difficult conditions’’).

The venture’s role and model
What are critical roles that will be key to enabling driving that change, and what is missing? What is the venture’s unique role in the system? We previously identified 12 typologies of impact — or roles that a venture can play in a system towards system change. Determine which of these roles is the venture well positioned (willing and able) to play; and subsequently how to work with existing initiatives in the idea maze in a collaborative way toward system change.

Part 3: Charting the Future

Here we are finding the critical forks in the road for the venture.

3.1. Future dynamics
Take the history and existing dynamics — where are there trends or shifts that could play out again and what structures and parameters could change over different time periods?

There are infinite ways the system could change. How can we start to bound these infinite possibilities? Based on your knowledge to date, what’s your mental model for the most likely, most salient changes, and can you map out how that might change key dynamics? What are the critical forks in the road where critical decisions will need to be made?

Peter Drucker, in his book “Effective Executive”, referenced some key facets to consider when looking for opportunities:

An unexpected success or failure in their own enterprise, in a competing enterprise, or in the industry;
A gap between what is and what could be in a market, process, product, or service
Innovation in a process, product, or service, whether inside or outside the enterprise or its industry;
Changes in industry structure and market structure;
Demographics;
Changes in mindset, values, perception, mood, or meaning;
New knowledge or a new technology

We can also add:

What new roles may need to be filled? What new roles could emerge?
Which actors may exist or not in the future? What impact would that have?
How might relationships between actors change?

How do we explore this? Here are 4 ways:

Look at the past: How have certain industries, movements (e.g. organic farming) evolved or new breakthroughs come through? What were the conditions that enabled them to, whether it be policy and regulation, the social climate or key technological breakthroughs?
Engage stakeholders: What do experts see as key evolutions coming down the pipe (e.g. a forthcoming carbon tax, or biodiversity and nature valued more highly). What are investors seeing more activity in, hoping or expecting more activity in? What are government innovation departments incentivising?
Consider growth: Where are the key nascent areas that are growing quickly, even if they are small now? What is the infrastructure that will develop around these areas?
Futurecast: How can we envision the future we want to build? If we look at the future we want to build, what solutions are core to that future, and what solutions are fundamentally not part of that future? How does our solution fit into this future? How might it need to evolve? How might we work back from that future? What are the critical forks in the road?

3.2. Future theory of change
What are possible iterations of our theory of change beyond the timescale we are looking at? What needs to be true for that change to happen? Or how might it adapt based on different scenarios playing out?

3.3. Future players, roles, models

Future actors, breakthroughs, roles
Based on the shifting dynamics, how can we project different players or models coming into the space? What initiatives can we imagine emerging in the space and what key attributes will they have?

The various “future selves” of the venture
This is the crux of the idea maze.

Based on how the system dynamics could change, as well as the change intended, what are all the twists and turns that the venture will have to adapt to and how will it adapt?

What are the critical forks in the road that are forthcoming for the venture? What are the most immediate that will need to be decided in the near future? What roles can or should the venture play? What might its product look like in the future? How might its impact model change? Will it need to expand geographically and scale up, or seek deeper structural change and scale deep? How will it do that?

While we could game out every scenario, we should focus mainly on pivotal moments for the venture. This step is not about gaming out every possible scenario in detail and your strategy towards it, but getting a grip on the general evolutions and how your model might adapt.

What are the moves other ventures have made in the past in line with changing system dynamics and landscape?

For a few trigger areas of thinking, take a few of the most relevant scenarios and ask how the following changes:

How does the impact model evolve?
Organisational theory of change, Product-level theory of change, Role in the system AKA Role Typologies
What implication does that have for the strategy and attributes of the venture?
Target user/beneficiary, Business Model, Key strategic moves & milestones, Org chart
How does the product roadmap evolve?
Product & features, Pricing, key technologies

A key question to ask when you think about each fork: what would need to be true for us to take each pathway?

Here’s a case study library of idea mazes of well-known (non-impact) companies that can give you a flavour, or you can check out Benedict Evans’ Virtual Reality Idea Maze from back in 2016.

Time traveling through the Idea Maze

If you are tackling the maze, leverage many tools that you already use. Focus most of your time on understanding the current landscape, the change you seek, and your unique role. Augment that with some history of the system, peppered with some historical understanding of similar dynamics from other contexts. Use this thinking to consider the critical future forks in the road. Spend some time gaming things out, but try to avoid getting caught in every possibility.

The idea maze is an ongoing loop. As the system evolves, you need to make sense of it and build a new model (or adapt your current one). The strength of your idea maze will also self-reinforce over time — a bit like a machine learning algorithm, the more information you process, the stronger your model becomes.

The idea maze is quite powerful because it’s a great holistic litmus test for an entrepreneur’s capability. It can test accrued expertise in a domain, show drive, help communicate a vision, and build in adaptability, groundedness, and pragmatism in the face of complexity.

How do we know if we or others are strong idea mazers? Maybe the best litmus test for the quality of the maze runner is the Feynman Test of testing your knowledge by teaching, specifically explaining a concept to a 12 year old. Put yourself or founders you work with in front of sharp, curious people who will dig into how they got to an understanding of the problem, the solution, and model based on the observation of the past and current system. Such people will also ask more and more detailed questions about how they see the future. The test is, can the founder answer these questions clearly?