Yeah. There is a phase of discovery - we simply don't know what (some combination of) the project goals, the user needs, the market, the business model and the architectures possible. By doing something we find out. often our guesses are good. Often the company politics mean we build some atrocious monster. The point here is we are elimating what's wrong (the choices are /right/ not (provably) wrong/ (provably) wrong/ and not even wrong (as a famous physicist would mark his students)
Once this is done (maybe proof of concept, maybe research maybe years of fighting the politics) we can build out something that's not wrong.
If we time it well and get it right it's a unicorn. It's Facebook. if we time it right but get it merely not wrong, it's friendster or myspace.
And of course by the time we have learnt all that, mobile hits and we have to relearn
Once this is done (maybe proof of concept, maybe research maybe years of fighting the politics) we can build out something that's not wrong.
If we time it well and get it right it's a unicorn. It's Facebook. if we time it right but get it merely not wrong, it's friendster or myspace.
And of course by the time we have learnt all that, mobile hits and we have to relearn