Why Should We Question?

Get curious about the importance and utility of asking questions with Adolfo Espíritu as he applies his curiosities about questions in the first part of a series on questions, curiosity, and more for the Corporation of Tomorrow.

Questions are a manifest of curiosity; they are made because one seeks an answer to expand their knowledge. If I were to summarize the innovation process proposed by Ash Maurya for developing a business plan that works, I would divide it into three phases:

• Understanding the problem

• Develop a solution

• Prove that it works

Albert Einstein once said that if he had an hour to solve a problem, he would expend 55 minutes for understanding the problem and the rest solving it. Understanding the problem implies that you can draw it; you can identify the root cause and can extract all the essences. By having this panorama, solutions come naturally, or at least it points you where you must search because you know what is needed to be solved. One simple but difficult question to answer is Why is it a problem and why do I have it? This is a basic question which can trigger innovation because the next logical question is How do I solve it?

This question can be answered using multiple approaches (the first one is proposing a solution and do benchmark (seeing if there is a similar solution to yours), or the second one is to search for a similar problem and its solutions, so you can adapt them to your own). During this search it is important to have a guarantee that the solution will work, so this issue can be addressed by asking how can I prove that this solution will solve my problem? There are two ways to find out: either by investigating that there are similar solutions to yours which work or by experimentation. If you go for experiments, you have two possible outcomes: either your idea hits the nail and works, or you find a way that does not solve your problem, so questions here help you to analyze your results and learn. This knowledge can help you to improve your solution to the problem and can be used for similar future problems. At the end, questions are the main drivers for solving problems and innovation.

Want to know more about questions? Stay tuned for more entries.

For further reference check:

• Warren Berger. (2016). A More Beautiful Question. USA: Bloomsbury

• Ash Maurya. (2012). Running Lean Iterate from Plan A to a Plan that Works. USA: O'Reilly.

Adolfo Arana Espíritu Santo is a student at the Monterrey Institute of Technology & Higher Learning and loves getting curious about, Math, Physics, and Quantum Computers.

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