Questions and Innovation

In a recent conversation about innovation, my friend Peter posed a series of provoking thoughts. Innovation, he says, may be associated with learning difficulty, an inability to accept the truth:

It's as if you have to hold everything without judgment and then at a point you put the fragments of experience, observation, knowledge, relationships etc. together in such a way that when you look around you're surprised that the whole world doesn't put the pieces together that way.

Business love ideas (innovation) but hate thoughts (questions ).

Does the intitutionalisation of big "I" Innovation within larger corporates limit the opportunity for much bigger innovations throughout the market?

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In this ChangeThis manifesto, Corinne Miller, Founder & Principal Consultant of InnovatingResults!, talks about the role of questions in innovation. She calls it Questionating, a new term.

Premise

Questions stimulate the brain! Questions use verbs and words that activate key areas of the brain that, in turn, increase the volume and  variety of questions.

The more questions, the more creativity and innovation. We like to say that questions open the innovation pipeline.

Why is it that the older we get, the fewer questions we ask?

We’ve found that the most popular answers to this question have been: asking a question makes one look stupid; asking a question is a sign of weakness; and people think they know the answer so they don’t feel the need to ask.

What if questions were baked into the business processes? Corinne suggest four steps to developing a QuestionBank: Identify Question Sources, Collect Questions, Organize Questions, and Refine Questions. Two of the most provocative questions might be:

“What or how might people change or improve ___________ to _________ ?”

and,

“What new or different ideas might change or improve _____________ ?”

What are your most thought provoking questions?

Comments

[Lois Kelly]

Valeria,
You're onto something big. At last October's Business Innovation Factory conference all of the hugely successful innovators in companies big and small said that breakthroughs come from asking obvious questions. http://blog.foghound.com/182/ A big issue is companies' willingness to be open to those seemingly obvious questions. Irving Wladawsky-Berger, vice president, Technical Strategy and Innovation, IBM, said he thinks companies need to be facing a near-death experience to start paying attention to the questions.

Wish we had had time to connect last Thurs. at BRITE. Love your insights and writing.

Lois

[Carolyn Ann]

"Why is it that the older we get, the fewer questions we ask?"

Harrumph! The older I get, the more questions I have!

It might be better to ask "the more comfortable we get, the fewer questions we can be bothered with". The young revolutionary asks lots of questions. And, in my experience, supplies the answers, too!

Me, I just ask questions...

:-)
Carolyn Ann

[Valeria Maltoni]

@Lois -- My experience is consistent with Irving Wladawsky-Berger's. Unless absolutely necessary, companies will continue with "business as usual" course. I have remarked before that often processes that were meant to serve people become monsters people have to serve. Thank you for your kind words. I am planning to stay in touch and learn more about your work.

@Carolyn Ann -- children ask the best questions of all. They are in discovery mode and have the curiosity that scientists manage to retain. There's also the other conversation about asking questions for the sake of asking... we save that for another day.

[daksh]

I think as you grow up, your experience comes in and you've answers in your mind because of the problems you've faced in the past. I would compare an industry freshman with a child, he's raw, he's new and willing to take on the world and is full with fresh and insightful questions in his mind.

Thanks for sharing an insightful piece, Valeria ! I'd soon talk about 'Questionating' on my blog :)

[Peter]

There is a clue to societies contempt for questions - Have you ever noticed that people apologise when they think aloud.

I wonder what we are doing the rest of the time.

On questions

I'm promoting the idea that the precursor to the fall of civilization is the point when the available number of answers exceeds the number of questions asked.

Its one of the problems of organising society around capital. There is a tendency to produce only that which people will buy. Have you ever bought a question that didn't come with an answer.

Take "Two of the most provocative questions might be:

“What or how might people change or improve ___________ to _________ ?”

and,

“What new or different ideas might change or improve _____________ ?”

I don't find these provocative. More an excuse for an answer or 50. It's an example of what I call Google minded (Google is a way of thinking - a technological inspired approach to the understanding of knowledge (But this is for another time)

Provocative is when you ask a question that takes longer to understand than to answer.

As Richard Rorty pointed out the chief agent of cultural change is to speak differently rather than to argue well. Of course, Richard didn't have to make his quarterly numbers.

Spk soon.

Peter

[Valeria Maltoni]

I'm with your, Peter. Those were deemed provocative in the manifesto! Sometimes the question is asked in such a way to distract everyone from the better question, that which would require too big a change, too large an effort.

Speaking differently is not seen too much in corporate America these days. Everything is processed and benchmarked. And yes, our first job is to make those numbers.

[Peter]

Yes - too many questions are really just an excuse for an answer.

There lies the greatest irony and a further clue to to Prozac nature of management fads - make them think they are thinking - its a great way of keeping control and making the numbers.

It's interesting, this thinking turns Fast Company goes from revolutionary to an ultra conservative - not by design but by cause and effect. I'm not saying it is just that -- you can think it that way and that opens up opportunities.

By the way, I think about measurement a lot. As a concept, it rates along time and the self as critically under examined.

I see them as sentinels defending current ways of life.

But as a society and market we may need to battle these concepts if we are to evolve "healthier" ways of life.

Thanks for the chat.