Finding Innovative Ideas with The Innovator’s DNA

Here’s an idea for you from the Innovator’s DNA that I thought was worth sharing. If you want to innovate, you need to ask questions. More importantly, you need to ask the right type of questions.

The goal is to challenge assumptions, make new connections, and see past what’s already there. This doesn’t happen by asking a random scattering of questions but through a disciplined practice.

Here’s how they sum up the approach in the book:

During interviews with disruptive innovators, we noticed not only a high frequency of questions but a pattern as well. They started with a deep-sea-like exploration of what currently is and then rocketed to the skies for an equally compelling search for what might be. Focusing on what is, they asked lots of who, what, when, where, and how questions (as world-class journalists or investigators do) to dig beneath the surface and truly “know the place for the first time” (as poet T. S. Eliot observed).

Essentially, you need to be able to see the entire box before you can see outside the box. Only by asking the right questions can you get build the full picture necessary to find a transformative solution to the challenge.