Experience & Education
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Massachusetts Institute of Technology
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Publications
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Questions Are the Answer: A Breakthrough Approach to Your Most Vexing Problems at Work and in Life
HarperCollins
See publicationWhat if you could unlock a better answer to your most vexing problem—in your workplace, community, or home life—just by changing the question?
Talk to creative problem-solvers and they will often tell you, the key to their success is asking a different question.
Take Debbie Sterling, the social entrepreneur who created GoldieBlox. The idea came when a friend complained about too few women in engineering and Sterling wondered aloud: "why are all the great building toys made for…What if you could unlock a better answer to your most vexing problem—in your workplace, community, or home life—just by changing the question?
Talk to creative problem-solvers and they will often tell you, the key to their success is asking a different question.
Take Debbie Sterling, the social entrepreneur who created GoldieBlox. The idea came when a friend complained about too few women in engineering and Sterling wondered aloud: "why are all the great building toys made for boys?" Or consider Nobel laureate Richard Thaler, who asked: "would it change economic theory if we stopped pretending people were rational?" Or listen to technologist Elon Musk, who routinely challenges assumptions with questions like: "What are people accepting as an industry standard when there’s room for significant improvement?"
Great questions like these have a catalytic quality—that is, they dissolve barriers to creative thinking and channel the pursuit of solutions into new, accelerated pathways. Often, the moment they are voiced, they have the paradoxical effect of being utterly surprising yet instantly obvious.
The power of questions has always been clear—but it took some years for a crucial follow-on question to surface: If so much depends on fresh questions, shouldn’t we know more about how to arrive at them? That sent me on a research quest ultimately including over two hundred interviews with creative thinkers. Questions Are the Answer delivers the insights Gregersen gained about the conditions that give rise to catalytic questions—and breakthrough insights—and how anyone can create them. -
Better Brainstorming: Focus on Questions, Not Answers, for Breakthrough Insights
Harvard Business Review
See publicationGreat innovators have long known that the secret to unlocking a better answer is to ask a better question. Applying that insight to brainstorming exercises can vastly improve the search for new ideas—especially when a team is feeling stuck. Brainstorming for questions, rather than answers, helps you avoid group dynamics that often stifle voices, and it lets you reframe problems in ways that spur breakthrough thinking.
After testing this approach with hundreds of organizations, MIT’s Hal…Great innovators have long known that the secret to unlocking a better answer is to ask a better question. Applying that insight to brainstorming exercises can vastly improve the search for new ideas—especially when a team is feeling stuck. Brainstorming for questions, rather than answers, helps you avoid group dynamics that often stifle voices, and it lets you reframe problems in ways that spur breakthrough thinking.
After testing this approach with hundreds of organizations, MIT’s Hal Gregersen has developed it into a methodology: Start by selecting a problem that matters. Invite a small group to help you consider it, and in just two minutes describe it at a high level so that you don’t constrain the group’s thinking. Make it clear that people can contribute only questions and that no preambles or justifications are allowed. Then, set the clock for four minutes, and generate as many questions as you can in that time, aiming to produce at least 15. Afterward, study the questions generated, looking for those that challenge your assumptions and provide new angles on your problem. If you commit to actively pursuing at least one of these, chances are, you’ll break open a new pathway to unexpected solutions. -
Bursting the CEO Bubble
Harvard Business Review
See publicationAlthough CEOs are charged with recognizing when their firms need a major change in direction, their power and privilege often insulate them from information that would help them perceive looming opportunities or threats. No one in the company wants to tell the CEO of problems, much less that he or she is mistaken.
In interviews with 200 executives, Gregersen came across hardly any who didn’t recognize this challenge. But he also saw that a few innovative leaders, like Walt Bettinger of…Although CEOs are charged with recognizing when their firms need a major change in direction, their power and privilege often insulate them from information that would help them perceive looming opportunities or threats. No one in the company wants to tell the CEO of problems, much less that he or she is mistaken.
In interviews with 200 executives, Gregersen came across hardly any who didn’t recognize this challenge. But he also saw that a few innovative leaders, like Walt Bettinger of Charles Schwab and Marc Benioff of Salesforce, have found a way to overcome it. Such executives take pains to get honest feedback from a broad range of constituents. They also venture off the beaten path, regularly putting themselves into situations where they are unusually uncomfortable, unexpectedly wrong, and uncharacteristically quiet. This helps them ask the right questions, discover new insights, and detect early weak signals of impending market shifts. -
The Innovator's DNA
Harvard Business Review Press
Based upon years of academic research, The Innovator’s DNA identifies behaviors of the world’s best innovators—from leaders at Amazon and Apple to those at Google, Skype, and Virgin Group—and outlines five discovery skills that distinguish innovative entrepreneurs and executives from ordinary managers: Associating, Questioning, Observing, Networking, and Experimenting.
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