A More Beautiful Question: The Power of Inquiry to Spark Breakthrough Ideas

by Warren Berger

Noonan observes that if you never actually do anything about a problem yourself, then you’re not really questioning—you’re complaining.

one of the primary drivers of questioning is an awareness of what we don’t know—which is a form of higher awareness that separates not only man from monkey but also the smart and curious person from the dullard who doesn’t know or care.

Good questioners tend to be aware of, and quite comfortable with, their own ignorance

“One good question can give rise to several layers of answers, can inspire decades-long searches for solutions, can generate whole new fields of inquiry, and can prompt changes in entrenched thinking,” Firestein writes. “Answers, on the other hand, often end the process.”

divergent thinking—the mental process of trying to come up with alternative ideas.

“convergent” (focused) thinking as they get at the core of a difficult problem and reach consensus on how to proceed. They even use questions for “meta cognitive thinking,” as they analyze and reflect upon their own questions.

technology can serve up amazing, innovative, life-changing answers—if we know how to ask for them.

Which reinforces that the value of questions is going to keep rising as that of answers keeps falling.

Einstein explains that there’s no reason to fill his mind with information that can so easily be looked up.

only through effective inquiry can we fully explore, probe, access, and, hopefully, figure out what to do with all those answers the technology has in store for us.

immense resources and capabilities are available today to those who are able to access and traverse the network that now exists online.

you need to understand how to frame the questions to get the best response.”

there’s never been a better time to be a questioner—because it is so much easier now to begin a journey of inquiry, with so many places you can turn for information, help, ideas, feedback, or even to find possible collaborators who might be interested in the same question.

a questioner can thrive in these times of exp...

if you’re comfortable questioning, experimenting, connecting things—then change is something that becomes an adventure.

if you can see it as an adventure, then you’re off and running.”

Brown’s words, “questioning, experimenting, connecting things.”

first stage of innovative questioning—first confronting, formulating, and framing the initial question that articulates the challenge at hand, and trying to gain some understanding of context.

Oftentimes, these questions arise out of mundane, everyday situations,

searching for a question they can work on and answer. The term problem-finding is used to describe this pursuit, and while it may seem odd to go looking for problems, according to the business consultant Min Basadur38—who teaches problem-finding skills to executives at top companies—it’s one of the most important things to do for an established business, large or small.

if you seek out problems in your life before they’re obvious, before they’ve reached a crisis stage, you can catch and address them while they still offer the best opportunities for improvement and reinvention.

Just asking Why without taking any action may be a source of stimulating thought or conversation, but it is not likely to produce change.

(Basic formula: Q (questioning) + A (action) = I (innovation). On the other hand, Q – A = P (philosophy).

the classic four-stage process of creativity—Preparation/Incubation/Illumination/Implementation—developed nearly a century ago by the British psychologist Graham Wallas.

A journey of inquiry is bound to lead you into the unknown (as it should), but if you have a sense of the kinds of questions to ask at various stages along the way, you’ve at least got some road markers. Indeed, this is the beauty of “process” in general: It may not provide any answers or solutions, but, as one design-thinker told me, having a process helps you to keep taking next steps—so that, as he put it, “even when you don’t know what41 you’re doing, you still know what to do.”

At the What If stage the imagination begins to go to work, whether we’re conscious of it or not.

The mind, if preoccupied with a problem or question long enough, will tend to come up with possibilities that might eventually lead to answers, but at this stage are still speculations, untested hypotheses, and early epiphanies.

What if moments—bright possibilities that are untested and open to question.)

Exploring What If possibilities is a wide-open, fun stage of questioning and should not be rushed.

the idea of “sitting with” and “living with” a question may seem strange, as we’ve gotten used to having our queries answered...

Often the worst thing you can do with a difficult question is to try to answer it too quickly. When the mind is coming up with What If possibilities, these fresh, new ideas can take time to percolate and form.

connecting existing ideas in unusual and interesting ways.

Einstein was an early believer in this form of “combin...

Since this type of thinking involves both connections and questions, I think of i...

What If possibilities are powerful things;

they are the seeds of innovation.

Each time Phillips fell, he landed in a place that was further ahead, closer to the breakthrough. He was failing forward, the whole time.

Love this idea!

As Louis C.K. makes clear, we may profess to admire kids’ curiosity, but at some point we just don’t welcome those questions anymore.

Kids’ brains are constantly connecting stimuli or thoughts.

When we start teaching too much, too soon, says Gopnik, we’re inadvertently cutting off paths of inquiry and exploration that kids might otherwise pursue on their own.

“Children are the research and development division of the human species.” If they are permitted to do that research—to raise and explore their own questions, through various forms of experimentation, and without being burdened with instructions—they exhibit signs of more creativity and curiosity.

“Somehow, we’ve defined the goal of schooling as enabling you to have more ‘right answers’ than the person next to you. And we penalize incorrect answers. And we do this at a pace—especially now, in this highly focused test-prep universe—where we don’t have time for extraneous questions.”

as we move from an industrial society to more of an entrepreneurial one, it makes sense that we would want to trade in the factory/obedience model of schooling for more of a questioning model. But as the world changed and the workplace changed with it, the old educational model hasn’t evolved much—and

need for more creative, independent-thinking “workers.”

Five learning skills, or “habits of mind,” were at the core of her school, and each was matched up with a corresponding question: Evidence: How do we know what’s true or false? What evidence counts? Viewpoint: How might this look if we stepped into other shoes, or looked at it from a different direction? Connection: Is there a pattern? Have we seen something like this before? Conjecture: What if it were different? Relevance: Why does this matter?

Meier learned to listen carefully to students’ questions, finding that they often contained insights that prompted her to rethink her own assumptions and occasionally reconsider the curriculum.

pursue what they’re interested in, they become easier to control. The much harder thing is forcing them to sit still for five hours and pay attention to information they don’t care about.

As Meyer understood, if a student thinks of a question him/herself, it is likely to be of more interest than someone else’s question.

For instance, children may be self-censoring their questions due to cultural pressures.

Aronson said. “Fear is the enemy of curiosity. Unfortunately, if you’re in that situation, you may feel pressure to look a certain way to others.” That can cause students to act as if they already know or just don’t care.