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January 12 - January 20, 2023
A growing body of research describes what happens when we allow the unconscious mind to work on a problem. Writing recently on the site Big Think, Sam McNerney pulled together a number48 of recent studies showing that sleeping can help people to perform better at solving difficult problems requiring a creative solution.
“A difficult problem at night is resolved in the morning after the committee of s...
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Similar research exists on daydreaming and its value in producing original, creative ideas. And everyone knows about the clichéd (but only because it’s true) idea-in-the-shower moment. The same neurological forces seem to be at work in all of these instances. The sleeping or relaxed brain cuts off distractions and turns inward, a...
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Reality intrudes and nothing goes quite as planned. To say it’s the hard part of questioning is not to suggest it’s easy to challenge assumptions by asking Why, or to envision new possibilities by asking What If. Those require difficult backward steps and leaps of imagination. But How tends to be more of a slow and difficult march, marked by failures that are likely to be beneficial—but don’t necessarily seem that way at the time.
But when it comes time to act on an idea, you have to narrow possibilities and converge on the one deemed worthy of being taken to the next level.
That kind of verbal pitch is useful up to a point. But you haven’t really committed to an idea until you’ve given actual form to it. The question or idea must be made tangible and shareable—the better to be considered, passed around, perhaps tested in some way.
The most basic way to give form to an idea is to put it on paper (Nanda created rough sketches of what a Clocky might look like before she started building). Depending on the idea, putting it in writing—a summary, a proposal—may be sufficient, but keep in mind that visuals have great power. “If you want everyone to have59 the same mental model of a problem, the fastest way to do it is with a picture,” according to the visualization expert David Sibbet.
As the representation of an idea becomes more complex—a test website, say, or a three-dimensional early model of a product (such as Nanda’s shag-carpeted clock)—it moves into the prototype stage.
The IDEO designer Diego Rodriguez once remarked, “A prototype is a question, embodied.”60 Given a body, the question becomes harder to ignore. Nanda’s question—What if a clock had wheels?—became much more compelling to people when they actually saw a clock with wheels.
Some programs now can turn anyone into a sketch artist or website designer; more advanced software also allows users now to create highly sophisticated models that can be tested in all kinds of what-if scenarios (so that, for example, a digital prototype of a building can be subjected to simulated earthquake-level stress, to see how the building would hold up).
The possibilities for prototyping will be greatly expanded as 3-D printing becomes widely available and affordable over the next few years. The technology, which makes it easy to sketch an idea for an object on a computer screen and then manufacture a physical version (usually made of plastic or steel), is “enabling a class of ordinary people61 to take their ideas and turn those into physical, real products,” according to J. Paul Grayson, chief executive of the design-software company Alibre. It provides just one more way to bring our questions into the physical world.
That tendency toward overthinking and excessively preparing, rather than quickly trying out ideas to get feedback and to see what works and doesn’t, is a behavior that becomes ingrained over time.
They tried one way of building, and if it didn’t work, they quickly tried another. They got in a lot more tries. They learned from their mistakes as they went along, instead of attempting to figure out everything in advance.
we’re all being challenged (or will soon be) to take some version of the marshmallow test: we’ll be expected to quickly adapt to using new and unfamiliar tools, as we try to construct new businesses, new markets, new careers, new life plans—using ever-changing technology, without clear instructions, and with the clock ticking. All of which requires people to be not only better questioners, but better experimenters.
At IDEO, the firm’s designers quickly move from coming up with ideas to building and testing those ideas. The same is true at MIT Media Lab, where, as the director Joi Ito explains, the researchers and students don’t spend a lot of time wondering about the questions they’re pursuing, or debating how best to proceed. They quickly start doing what you’re supposed to do in a lab—experimenting. As Ito puts it, “These days it’s easier and less expensive to just try out your ideas than to figure out if you should try them out.”
while the word hacking has some negative connotations, at Facebook it means “building something quickly or testing the boundaries of what can be done.” This means constantly trying out new ideas in rough form. “Hackers try to build the best services over the long term by quickly releasing and learning from smaller iterations rather than trying to get everything right all at once . . . Instead of debating for days whether a new idea is possible or what the best way to build something is, hackers would rather just prototype something and see what works.”
Ries maintains that entrepreneurs, existing companies—or anyone trying to create something new and innovative—must find ways to constantly experiment and quickly put new ideas out into the world for public consumption, rather than devoting extensive resources and time to trying to perfect ideas behind closed doors. Ries urges businesses to focus on developing what he calls “minimum viable products”—in effect, quick, imperfect test versions of ideas that can be put out into the marketplace in order to learn what works and what doesn’t.
The basic principles of the test-and-learn approach apply in almost any situation where people are trying to solve problems in dynamic, uncertain conditions.
As Winston Churchill once said, “The trick is to go from one failure65 to another, with no loss of enthusiasm.” But how does one learn to perform that “trick” of “failing enthusiastically”? “Every time a prototype breaks, it’s heartbreaking,” Phillips said. But it’s also an opportunity: How do I learn to learn from failure? The answer is, through questioning. Rather than run from a failure or try to forget it ever happened, hold it to the light and inquire, Why did the idea or effort fail? What if I could take what I’ve learned from this failure and try a revised approach? How might I do that?
when it comes to feedback, “dissonance can actually be more valuable than resonance.” As people push back on your idea, it can be a good indication that you’re entering uncharted, potentially important territory—because you’re more likely to get negative feedback (“That could never work!”) on ideas that challenge common assumptions.
“Dissonance is the most misunderstood kind of feedback,” Bottino says. “We really should welcome it and learn to make the most of it.” As Bottino points out, it’s critical when taking on a challenging project to know how to solicit outside input and help, and to know how to engage with potential advisers, supporters, and collaborators. If you’re pursuing a truly ambitious question, you probably can’t answer it alone. Collaborative inquiry begins with asking others, Do you find this question as interesting as I do? Want to join me in trying to answer it?
When looking at a challenging problem or question, the more perspectives that can be brought to bear, the better.
As you look for potential collaborators, aim for people with backgrounds, cultural experiences, and skill sets that differ from your own: diversity fuels creativity.
Now, for anyone looking to tackle big questions, “we all have two amazing things72 available to us,” said the film producer and part-time inventor Mick Ebeling. “We have a near-infinite resource of information at our fingertips—no other generation has had access to that. And we have this immediacy of human connection [through social networking and the Web in general]. You combine all of that information and that connection with people, and what we have is a global brain to tap into.”
Ebeling is so sold on the power of collaborative inquiry that he launched a website, Not Impossible Labs, designed to help innovators connect with each other and find great problems to work on together. The name derives from his belief that “it is naïve now to think that anything, any problem we might be looking at, is impossible to solve.” Whatever ambitious question you might come up with, people are out there with the knowledge, skills, and imagination to help you work toward an answer—if you can connect with them.
it’s critical to find a balance between working alone on ideas and working with others. “There are times, especially early in the creative process, when I want to slow down and think about a challenging question by myself,” he said. (At such times, he retreats to the solitude of a barn converted into a music studio.) “As a composer I love the act of imagining a question—and even a whole world—and being able to make it real in your mind over a long period, before you share it with others.”
“Everyone is comfortable saying to others in the lab, ‘Here’s something I’m passionate about—would you help me to think about this question?’”
“I wanted to see what happens when you try to answer a question working with a lot of people,”
“The point was to say, ‘If you like listening to music, you’ll like it even more if you can be part of it, touch it and shape it.”
“But what I’ve become convinced of is that if you’re willing to lay out something in public that you care about, people will be interested in participating. And they’re capable of remarkable things.”
Sharing a question with others is akin to issuing a challenge that a certain type of curious-minded person may find hard to resist. Just by formulating the question, you’ve taken a critical and difficult first step that others can now piggyback on.
many people are drawn to an existing idea they can join in on and help to improve or advance, rather than starting from scratch on their own. Machover observes that in appealing to others with a shared question, “you are involving collaborators as equals in a project.” What may start out seeming as if it’s “your” question quickly becomes theirs, too; questions belong to everyone.
Holding back ideas—hoarding your beautiful questions—is usually pointless because it’s hard to make headway on something hidden in a drawer. Better to bring a question out into the light of day and trust that, with help from others, you’ll get something out of it—a solution, a learning experience, an insight, a fresh perspective, a sense of purpose—that will be yours.
The notion of a need to keep moving ideas forward, to keep pursuing new opportunities and responding to change by way of constant, cyclical questioning is particularly relevant in today’s dynamic business environment, where companies find that “answers” are transitory and increasingly short-lived.
Clayton Christensen is today considered one of the foremost experts on business innovation. A veteran professor at the Harvard Business School, Christensen introduced the term disruptive innovation1 into the business lexicon two decades ago, and it has become both a cliché and a driving force in business ever since. His ideas have been embraced by the likes of Intel leader Andy Grove and Apple cofounder Steve Jobs.
“For me, it always starts with a question,” Christensen told me. “I knew the failure could not be attributed to managers’ being stupid. So I framed the question as Why are the smartest people in the world having this problem? Just thinking of it that way made me look in different places.”
In an increasingly technical marketplace, if you could take a product that was expensive, complex, and exclusive and make it affordable and accessible, you could open up a mass market and change the game—toppling the established leaders. But why were only the newcomers seizing this opportunity? Why weren’t the established leaders, with all their know-how and resources, able to dominate the low end of the market as well as the high end?
After Christensen published his theory in the bestselling book The Innovator’s Dilemma, the idea of focusing on “disruptive innovation” at the low end of markets became standard business practice, particularly in Silicon Valley, where Christensen’s book was, for a time, a kind of innovator’s bible.
The old, closed questions (How many? How much? How fast?) still matter on a practical level, but increasingly businesses must tackle more sophisticated open questions (Why? What if? How?) to thrive in an environment that demands a clearer sense of purpose, a vision for the future, and an appetite for change.
Start-ups have always had to ask tough questions about their reason for being (Why does the world need another company? Why should anyone care about us? How in the world are we going to break through?), and that’s truer than ever in a market now crowded with newcomers.
“questioning is now the number one thing I spend my time on with clients.”
It’s not easy to bring questioning to companies; most of them weren’t built for it. American businesses in particular, and many major post–World War II European companies, “were designed on a military model that came out of the war, built by people who’d been through that war, and the businesses were organized around that mind-set,” Patnaik says. Central to that was the idea of a formal hierarchy and chain of command that didn’t leave much room for calling into question the accepted practices and procedures.
Eric Ries, the pioneer of the Lean Startup movement, which teaches entrepreneurs and other companies how to adopt more agile, flexible approaches, points out that an incentive system has been built through the years to encourage answers, not questions. “The industrial economy was all about4 knowing the answer and expressing confidence,” Ries said. “If you did your homework, you were supposed to know. If you had unanswered questions, that meant you did a bad job and wouldn’t get rewarded.”
while rapid change makes it necessary for businesses to question more, it also causes businesspeople to feel as if they don’t have time to question what they’re doing.
For those inclined to question, the difficulty may be in knowing what to ask. “With all the uncertainty out there,” Patnaik says, “organizations don’t even know what they don’t know.” Figuring out the questions that are most critical for a particular company to consider, given current challenges and market conditions, may be the first order of business. While the key questions vary depending on the individual business, a good place to start is at the most fundamental level—with questions of purpose.
Many of the companies featured in this book—Patagonia, W. L. Gore, Nike, Airbnb, Panera, Netflix—started out on a quest to fill an unmet need, to make some aspect of our lives a bit easier, more convenient, more enjoyable. Most good companies are born trying to answer a question and solve a problem, which provides an early sense of purpose.
There are different ways of thinking about purpose. A furniture retailer might choose to think its purpose is to sell people furniture. But it could also approach the business in a very different way. Its higher purpose might be that the company brings a sense of style into the lives of those on a budget; or that it enables people to express their creativity through home furnishings. Getting this right is subtle; advertising sometimes attaches generic or artificial purposes to companies. But if the leaders of a company think hard enough, and question well enough, about where the company came
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To arrive at a powerful sense of purpose, Yamashita says, companies today need “a fundamental orientation that is outward looking”—so they can understand what people out there in the world desire and need, and what’s standing in the way. At the same time, business leaders also must look inward, to clarify their core values and larger ambitions.
To figure out the internal values, Yamashita urges company leaders to look back in time and consider this question: Who have we (as a company) historically been when we’ve been at our best? At the finest moments in a company’s history, Yamashita holds, its core values usually came shining through. But from time to time it may be necessary to revisit that past to reaffirm the company’s higher purpose.
What helps guide the company at all times, he said, is the knowledge of how it began.
