I killed the business. Yep, the miscalculated decisions led to the vanishing €10M revenue and shuttering the iconic brand of potato chips. Instead of the expected massive success, I and my fellows-in-crime found ourselves plain wrong.

Since this professional disaster in my junior years, I have been observing from the first-row seat how brilliant ideas come to life... and die before long.

A service people don't want to use. An app no one downloads. A disappointing market roll-out. Or a multi-million conceptual store shut down just after 2 years. All those stories start and end the same: a loud kick-off announcement at the beginning and a missing post-mortem after things went astray.

Yet, the paramount pattern hides from plain sight — the people overrating their ability to grasp the hyper-complex reality. We are too confident about things that sit outside of our control. We tend to make decisions without any piece of evidence. And we prefer to nurture wishful thinking rather than ask: "What if I am wrong?".

Thus, the fears overheard in the boardrooms seldom focus on a matter that makes or breaks a new venture. Instead, attention goes to the risk of being copied by the competition or an inability to meet supply with demand when popularity starts soaring.

We spot what should be the actual concern only when things fall to pieces: our assumptions.