7 Ways Questions Drive Innovation
Looking for answers first can send you down the wrong path — and solving the wrong problem just creates more problems.
Innovation solves problems. But solving problems isn’t really about finding answers, let alone the right answers. Asking questions is the engine that drives problem-solving and innovation.
Under the hood, innovation and creativity both work (though not to the same ends) by dancing between divergence and convergence, while at the same time moving forward. And it’s easy to see how questions fuel divergence.
What’s not so easy to see is that questions fuel divergence as well: Questions explore; questions filter. Questions move, while answers are static. Questions know how to two-step. Answers don’t even dance.
How Questions Drive Innovation
- Questions shift your lens and open your mind.
- Questions move you forward. They create story and build narrative.
- Questions guide you to the best problems, the ones you need to solve in order to make true transformation happen.
- Questioning your assumptions keeps you going in the right direction.
- Questions drive experimentation. ‘Fast failure,’ ‘reward failure,’ ‘learn from failure’ — the entire success/failure mindset is a failure. Instead, ask questions. Experiment. Iterate.
- Questions create story. They move. They build narrative. And as we all know, we learn best from story.
- Questions help you envision the future and the paths that could lead to that future.
As the saying goes, you have to kiss a lot of frogs to find a prince. In this metaphor, you have to ask a lot of questions to get to the right questions to get to the right answers.
