The Innovators DNA

Chapter 3: Discovery Skill #2 Questioning Chapter 4: Discovery Skill #3 Observing

By Janelle Thompson

Question the Unquestionable

Ratan Tata, chairman, Tata group

Peter Drucker

The important and difficult job is never to find

the right answers, it is to find the right question. For there are few things as useless if not dangerousas the right answer to the wrong question.

Challenge Status Quo

Better understand what is

Better understand what might be

Orit Gadiesh
When you
persist in asking questions throughout life particularly challenging onesits central to who you are and how you lead.

What is Questioning?
Questions are the creative catalyst for the other discovery behaviors. Hold the potential to cultivate creative insights. Innovators ask more questions than noninnovators, they also ask more provocative questions. Questioning is a way of life for innovators. Counterintuitive questions.

How to ask disruptive questions?

Question common wisdom & push boundaries, assumptions and borders. Describe the territory Tactic #1: Ask what is? questions Tactic #2: Ask what caused? questions Disrupt the territory Tactic #3: Ask why?/why not? questions Tactic #4: Ask what if? questions

Impose

constraints Eliminate constraints

What stops us from asking questions?

Afraid to look stupid Do not want to be looked at as uncooperative, disagreeable or disrespectful. Punishment for questioning own firm Expectations of answers and not questions. Cant ask the boss questions that challenge the status quo.

Potential Turbocharger
Questions alone do not produce innovation. Combine asking the right questions with other innovators DNA skills. Constantly create better questions You dont invent the answers, you reveal the answers by finding the right question. Jonas Salk (discoverer of the 1st polio vaccine)

Developing Skills

Tip #1: Engage in Question-Storming Tip #2: Cultivate question thinking Tip #3: Track your Q/A ratio Tip #4: Keep a questioncentered notebook.

Kind and patterns Why is it this way Challenge the status quo Disruptive territory

Observation is the big game changer in our company.

Scott Cook, founder, Intuit

Vuja de A sense of seeing something for the first time, even if you havent actually seen it many times before.

Observe the world around you

Observe different environments

Connect common threads

Framework for Observing: Look for the Job and a Better Way to Do It

Learning from Anthropologists

Observe someone trying to do a job Gain insight and understanding about the job to be done

Functional, Social, Emotional dimensions

Find a better way to do it.

Watching people in different circumstances who are trying to do a job and gaining insight about what job they really want to get done. Observing people, processes, companies, or technologies and seeing a solution that can be applied (perhaps with some modification) in a different context.

Two different types of observations

Framework for Observing: Look for the Job and a Better Way to Do It
Developing

Observational Skills

Actively watch consumers to see what

products they hire to do what jobs

Learn to look for surprises or anomalies. Find opportunities to observe in a new environment.

Actively Watch Customers-and Look for Workarounds

Workaround

Partial or incomplete solutions Pay attention and identify them May lead to

completely new
idea

Look for surprises

Customers

unintended use of the

product or service

Can provide clues to why it is not a

complete solution.

Look for the unexpected

Multisensory Experience

Engage all of your senses.

Change the environment

Try

to put yourself in a new

environment
Countries, Dont

museums, conferences

just look, but observe.

Tips for Developing Observational Skills

Tip #1 Tip #2 Tip #3 Tip #4 Observe customers. Observe companies. Observe whatever strikes your fancy.

Observe with all of your senses.

He who asks is a fool for 5 minutes, but he who does not ask is a fool forever. Chinese proverb
Nothing has such power to broaden the mind as the ability to investigate systematically and truly all that comes under thy observation in life. Marcus Aurelius