A More Beautiful Question (5 page)

Why did my candy bar melt? (And will my popcorn pop?)
³⁴

During the World War II years, Percy Spencer, a self-taught engineer leading the power tube division at defense contractor Raytheon, focused his efforts on the magnetron—the core tube that made radars so powerful they enabled U.S. bombers to spot periscopes on German submarines. Standing next to a magnetron one day, Spencer noticed that a candy bar in his pocket had melted. He then wondered,
Could the energy from the radio waves be used to actually cook food?
He placed some popcorn kernels near the tube and soon was munching on the world’s first microwave popcorn. In 1947, Raytheon put the first Radarange microwave ovens on the market—but it took another twenty years before the appliances were small enough to fit on a countertop.

In the current era of Google and Watson, with databases doing much of the “knowing” for us, many critics today question the wisdom of an education system that still revolves around teaching students to memorize facts. One such education critic, the author Sugata Mitra, made just this point
³⁵
at a TED Conference by tossing out the provocative question
Is “knowing” obsolete?
Of course, not all knowledge is mere factual information; the TED question, as worded, is overly broad. But if we zero in on a narrow kind of knowledge—stored facts or “answers”—then that kind of “knowing” might be better left to machines with more memory.

But if we can’t compete with technology when it comes to storing answers, questioning—that uniquely human capacity—is our ace in the hole. Until Watson acquires the equivalent of human curiosity, creativity, divergent thinking skills, imagination, and judgment, it will not be able to formulate the kind of original, counterintuitive, and unpredictable questions an innovative thinker—or even just your average four-year-old—can come up with.

Moreover, 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. This goes beyond just being able to query a search engine or a database; immense resources and capabilities are available today to those who are able to access and traverse the network that now exists online.

By tapping into social networks, online sources of information, and digital communities, it is increasingly feasible, MIT’s Ito points out, for an individual to tackle a large challenge or question, or to launch an initiative or movement. One can do so relatively quickly by “pulling resources—answers, expert advice, partners, sources of funding, influence—from the network as you need it.” However, “the main way you pull support from the network is by querying it. And you need to understand how to frame the questions to get the best response.”

In light of this, 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.

As John Seely Brown notes, a questioner can thrive in these times of exponential change. “If you don’t have that disposition to question,” Brown says, “you’re going to fear change. But if you’re comfortable questioning, experimenting, connecting things—then change is something that becomes an adventure. And if you can see it as an adventure, then you’re off and running.”

Why does everything begin with Why?

As Van Phillips began to proceed further on his own journey, he was, to use Brown’s words, “questioning, experimenting, connecting things.” He revised his initial Why question—
If they can put a man on the moon, why can’t
I
(not
they
) make a decent foot?—
and began to immerse himself deeply in the world of prosthetics.

The more Phillips learned, the more questions he had: about the materials being used (
Why wood, when there were so many better alternatives?
); about the shape (
Why did a prosthetic foot have to be shaped like a bulky human foot? Did that even make sense?
); about the primary purpose of a replacement foot (
Why was there so much emphasis on trying to match the look of a human foot? Wasn’t performance more important?
).

This all comprises the 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. I think of this as the Why stage, though not every question asked at this juncture has to begin with the word
why
. Still, this is the point at which one is apt to inquire:

•        
Why does a particular situation exist?

•        
Why does it present a problem or create a need or opportunity, and for whom?

•        
Why has no one addressed this need or solved this problem before?

•        
Why do you personally (or your company, or organization) want to invest more time thinking about, and formulating questions around, this problem?

The situation Van Phillips confronted was unusual in some ways. He didn’t have to go looking for his Why problem; it came to him. He didn’t have to wonder about whom it affected or whether it was worth his time. But when the problem was thrust upon him, he asked a proactive Why question (instead of just passively wondering,
Why did this have to happen to me?
). Then he kept asking more Why questions as he explored the nature and the dimensions of the problem.

Innovative questioners, when faced with situations that are less than ideal, inquire as to why, trying to figure out what’s lacking. Oftentimes, these questions arise out of mundane, everyday situations, such as that “late fees” problem encountered by Reed Hastings before he founded Netflix. Similarly, Pandora Internet Radio founder Tim Westergren, a former band musician, observing all the talented-yet-struggling musicians he knew, wondered why it was so difficult for them to connect with the audience they deserved. Airbnb cofounder Joe Gebbia, along with roommate Brian Chesky, wanted to know why people coming to his town at certain times of the year had so much trouble getting hotel accommodations.

The
New York Times
technology reporter David Pogue has written about how so many things that are now part of our everyday lives—such as ATM machines, computer documents, and shampoo bottles—all started the same way: We get these breakthroughs, Pogue writes, “when someone looks at the way things
³⁶
have always been done and asks why?”

And the phenomenon isn't limited to business innovation and invention stories; asking Why can be the first step to bringing about change in almost any context. Gretchen Rubin showed how a simple
³⁷
Why question could be applied to one’s everyday life—and be the spark that leads to dramatic change. One rainy day, looking out the window of a New York City bus, Rubin pondered,
Why am I not happy with my life as it is?
This question got her thinking about the nature of happiness, then researching that, then applying what she learned to her own life—and, importantly, to the lives of others. Thus was born her immensely successful multimedia venture known as
The Happiness Project
.

We can and should ask Why about career, family relationships, local community issues—anywhere we might encounter a situation that is ripe for change and improvement.
Why is my career not advancing in the way I’d hoped? Or if it is advancing, and I’m still not happy, why is that?
Why is my product or service failing to connect with customers who ought to love it?
Why is my father-in-law so difficult to get along with?

Why aren’t the players urinating more?
³⁹

Many companies and even entire industries can be traced back to a question—but they’re usually not as odd as this one. In 1965, Dwayne Douglas, a football coach at the University of Florida, wondered,
Why aren’t the players urinating more after the games?
The coach was baffled because he knew his players were drinking water on the sidelines; what he didn’t realize was that they were sweating away more fluids than could be replaced with water. Douglas shared his question with J. Robert Cade, a professor of renal (kidney) medicine at the university—who set about formulating a drink that could replace the electrolytes lost through sweat. Cade’s mixture was first tested on the freshman football team—who proceeded to defeat the upperclassmen in a practice session. The drink became known as Gatorade (named after the team mascot) and helped launch a sports drink industry now worth almost $20 billion.

Sometimes questioners go out looking for their Why—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 Basadur
³⁸
—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. As Basadur notes, if you are able to “find” a problem before others do, and then successfully answer the questions surrounding that problem, you can create a new venture, a new career, a new industry. Here again, as Basadur attests, it applies to life, as well—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)
. In observing how questioners tackle problems, I noticed a pattern in many of the stories:

•        
Person encounters a situation that is less than ideal; asks Why.

•        
Person begins to come up with ideas for possible improvements/solutions—with such ideas usually surfacing in the form of What If possibilities.

•        
Person takes one of those possibilities and tries to implement it or make it real; this mostly involves figuring out How.

The Why/What If/How sequence represents a basic and logical progression, drawing, in part, on several existing models that break down the creative problem-solving process. For example, current theories of “design thinking,”
⁴⁰
used by IDEO and other leading designers to systematically solve problems, have laid out a process that starts with framing a problem and learning more about it (similar to my Why stage), then proceeds to generating ideas (which corresponds to What If), and eventually builds upon those ideas through prototyping (which could be thought of as the How stage). A similar progression—moving from understanding a problem, to imagining possible solutions, to then going to work on those possibilities—can also be seen in the creative problem-solving processes of the business consultant Min Basadur (who, in turn, owes a debt to earlier processes developed by the little-known but legendary Creative Problem Solving Institute of Buffalo, New York). Echoes of this are even in the classic four-stage process of creativity—Preparation/Incubation/Illumination/Implementation—developed nearly a century ago by the British psychologist Graham Wallas.

All of which is to say there is good reason why the stages of questioning proceed in the order laid out in this book. It corresponds to what has been learned, through the years, about how best to confront problems and work toward possible solutions. It’s also based on observation of how many of the questioners featured in the book cycled through the process of coming up with innovative solutions.

The Why/What If/How progression offers a simplified way to approach questioning; it’s an attempt to bring at least some semblance of order to a questioning process that is, by its nature, chaotic and unpredictable. 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 what
⁴¹
you’re doing, you still know what to do.”