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  a. Hal Gregersen, “Bursting the CEO Bubble,” Harvard Business Review (March–April 2017): 76; Hal Gregersen, Questions Are the Answer: A Breakthrough Approach to Your Most Vexing Problems at Work and in Life (New York: HarperBusiness, 2018).

  b. David L. Krantz and Penelope Bacon, “On Being a Naïve Questioner,” Human Development 20, no. 3 (1977): 141.

  c. Nancy J. Adler, Nigel Campbell, and André Laurent, “In Search of Appropriate Methodology: From Outside the People’s Republic of China Looking In,” Journal of International Business Studies 20, no. 1 (1989): 61.

  Another approach to relaxing constraints surfaces in this question: “What if X technology were available to every consumer? How would it change consumer behavior?” After returning to Apple in the mid-1990s, Steve Jobs relaxed constraints by asking, “What would you do if money were no object?” prompting the creation of new products or services.8 This kind of question assumes that the pursuit of excellence at Apple occurs independent of outside constraints, including the cost of providing exactly what customers might want. Later, as a board member at Disney, Jobs pushed the same message further, admonishing people to “dream bigger” as they redesigned Disney retail stores to include one sales area labeled, “WWTD: What Would Tinker Bell Do?”9

  Questioning as a Potential Turbocharger

  Questions are a critical catalyst to creative insights. Yet, questions alone do not produce innovation. They are necessary, but insufficient. In the absence of practicing active observation, networking, or experimentation, theoretical innovators become what sportswriters in the United States might refer to as armchair quarterbacks. They ask clever questions from the sidelines and may naively believe that one or two magical questions will surface disruptive ideas, but they rarely, if ever, play in the real-life game of innovation.

  We found that innovators were more likely to successfully launch innovative products, services, or businesses when they combined an ongoing instinct to formulate and ask the right questions with other innovator’s-DNA skills. In other words, leaders who ask questions as they observe discover more than those who don’t. Leaders who ask questions as they network for new ideas discover more than those who don’t. Leaders who ask questions as they experiment discover more than those who don’t. Ultimately, questioning combined with the other discovery behaviors can truly turbocharge your innovation results.

  Changing our questions can change the world. The key is constantly creating better questions to see that world through new eyes. When this happens, we will find ourselves living the profound observation that Jonas Salk (discoverer of the first polio vaccine) made, that “You don’t invent the answer. You reveal the answer” by “asking the right question because the answer pre-exists.”10

  We hope our framework for surfacing the right questions can help you along your innovation journey. Start by probing what is and then pursuing what if, particularly what-if questions that impose or eliminate constraints. But remember the framework is not the end, but the means. It is the first step to getting new ideas that might succeed, not a surefire prescription for successful ones. The next three chapters provide further insight into other concrete actions we can take to help improve the questions we ask and, in the end, reveal potentially disruptive solutions to difficult problems.

  Tips for Developing Questioning Skills

  Innovators not only ask provocative questions but constantly work at asking better ones. For example, Michael Dell says that if he had a favorite question to ask, everyone would anticipate it, which wouldn’t make it very good. “Instead, I like to ask people things that they don’t think that I’m going to ask them,” he told us. “I kind of delight in coming up with questions that nobody has the answer to quite yet.” To consistently craft better questions, here are a few of our favorite tips. (For an even deeper dive on how to build your questioning skills, we recommend reading Questions Are the Answer: A Breakthrough Approach to Your Most Vexing Problems at Work and in Life, by Hal Gregersen.)

  Tip #1: Engage in QuestionStorming

  A few years ago, we stumbled across an incredibly valuable questioning tool. We were teaching a graduate business-school class and found ourselves stuck on a particular problem, unable to find any further insight through a typical brainstorming process. One of us suggested taking a time-out from the process and focusing our collective energies on only asking questions about the problem, instead of trying to construct another set of solutions. Much to our surprise, the questions-only approach dug much deeper into the fundamental elements of the challenge and opened everyone’s eyes to a new understanding of the problem.

  Since that first questions-only exercise, we have worked with individual executives and teams of executives over the years to develop a process we now call QuestionStorming.11 We all know about brainstorming, a process in which you get together as a team and brainstorm solutions to a problem. QuestionStorming is similar, but instead of focusing on solutions, you brainstorm questions about the problem.

  Here’s how it works. First, as an individual or team, identify a personal, work-unit, or organizational problem or challenge to solve. Then write down at least fifty questions about that problem or challenge. (If you’re dealing with a work-unit or organizational problem, it is preferable to generate these questions with a team and write all of the questions on a white board for everyone to see.) We suggest a couple of extra rules when doing this as a team: Generate only one question at a time. Have one person write the questions down so that everyone can see and reflect on each question being asked. No one can ask a new question until the last one is completely written down. This helps the group build on prior questions to generate better queries about the challenge. Prod each other to ask a full range of what-is, what-caused, why- and why-not, and what-if questions during the exercise.

  It’s important to follow some other rules. When capturing the questions, discipline yourself or your team to simply ask the question without offering a long preamble. Ruthlessly facilitate the focus on questioning until you have at least fifty questions (in other words, don’t tolerate answers; simply reinforce the importance of only asking questions about the problem or opportunity). After a possible stretch of initial silence (your team might struggle to formulate new questions about the issue), most teams engage in an even deeper inquiry about the real root causes of the problem or dimensions of an opportunity to see them in a new light. After listing the questions, prioritize and discuss the most important or intriguing ones in your search for better solutions. You may want to assign an individual or team to attempt to answer the most important questions (probably through observing, networking, or experimenting) before having the group brainstorm solutions.

  We have found that individuals who frequently engage in personal QuestionStorming about challenges facing their work unit, organization, industry, customers, suppliers, and so on are more likely to be viewed as creative, innovative, or strategic thinkers. One executive in a large pharmaceutical company started writing down questions for fifteen to twenty minutes each morning before work. Three months later, his boss told him that he had become the best strategic thinker in his business unit. Six months later, he was promoted. Practice does make perfect, or at least better, when it comes to questioning. So if your “questioning muscles have atrophied,” as Ahmet Bozer (president of Coca-Cola International) recognized after a recent QuestionStorming workshop with his senior team, “it’s time to start exercising those muscles.”

  Tip #2: Cultivate question thinking

  When identifying problems or challenges, we often describe them as statements. In fact, we often ask groups of executives to identify their top-three challenges. As they wrestle with the task and identify these challenges, they typically frame them as statements. We then give the group an additional five to ten minutes to reformulate their top-three challenges into their top-three questions (about leading innovation effectively, for example). We have found that actively translating statements into questions not only
helps sharpen problem statements, but also evokes more personal responsibility for the problems and moves participants to take more active next steps in the pursuit of answers.

  Tip #3: Track your Q/A ratio

  Disruptive innovators we interviewed consistently displayed a high Q/A ratio, where questions (Q) not only outnumbered answers (A) in a typical interaction, but good questions generated greater value than good answers. To check your current Q/A ratio, observe and assess your questioning and answering patterns in a variety of contexts. For example, in the last work meeting you attended or directed, what percent of your comments were questions? Keep a record of your Q/A ratio (percent of comments made that fall into each category) during meetings you attend in the coming week. When reviewing self-observations, you might ask what was your personal Q/A ratio? How many questions did you ask? Work to increase your Q/A ratio by reflecting on what questions were asked and then asking yourself, “What are the questions that aren’t obvious or are not being asked?”

  Tip #4: Keep a question-centered notebook

  To generate an even richer repository of questions, take time to capture your questions regularly. Richard Branson does this in notebooks “full of questions.” Review the questions periodically to see how many and what kinds of questions you’re consistently asking (or not asking). Table 3-1 can help you see what types of questions you might consider as you observe, network, and experiment to generate new ideas.

  TABLE 3-1

  Disruptive innovator’s question checkup

  As you keep your notebook, take a moment to reflect on the following:

  What are your questioning patterns? What kinds of questions do you focus on?

  What questions yield unexpected insights into why things are the way they are?

  What questions surface fundamental assumptions and challenge the status quo?

  What questions generate strong emotional responses (a great indicator of challenging the way things are)?

  What questions guide you best into disruptive territory?

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  For details and discount information for both print and ebook formats, contact [email protected], tel. 800-988-0886, or www.hbr.org/bulksales.

  Copyright 2019 Jeff Dyer, Hal Gregersen, and Clayton M. Christensen

  All rights reserved

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior permission of the publisher. Requests for permission should be directed to [email protected], or mailed to Permissions, Harvard Business School Publishing, 60 Harvard Way, Boston, Massachusetts 02163.

  First eBook Edition: June 2019

  ISBN: 978-1-63369-720-1

  eISBN: 978-1-63369-721-8

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Preface

  Introduction

  Part One

  Disruptive Innovation Starts with You

  1 The DNA of Disruptive Innovators

  2 Discovery Skill #1

  Associating

  3 Discovery Skill #2

  Questioning

  4 Discovery Skill #3

  Observing

  5 Discovery Skill #4

  Networking

  6 Discovery Skill #5

  Experimenting

  Part Two

  The DNA of Disruptive Organizations and Teams

  7 The DNA of the World’s Most Innovative Companies

  8 Putting the Innovator’s DNA into Practice

  People

  9 Putting the Innovator’s DNA into Practice

  Processes

  10 Putting the Innovator’s DNA into Practice

  Philosophies

  Conclusion

  Act Different, Think Different, Make a Difference

  Appendix A: Sample of Innovators Interviewed

  Appendix B: The Innovator’s DNA Research Methods

  Appendix C: Developing Discovery Skills

  Notes

  Index

  Acknowledgments

  About the Authors

  Preface

  Eight years. That’s how long it took to do the research behind The Innovator’s DNA and also the number of years since it was first published. Since that first edition rolled off the presses we have been gratified that so many readers have responded positively to the content. Ask anybody if they would like to be more creative, if they would like to generate more novel ideas, and you will undoubtedly get a resounding “yes.” The problem is that most people either think it is impossible because they believe creativity is a genetic trait or they simply don’t know where to start. The Innovator’s DNA shows you where to start. The key insight from our research is that creativity is not just a cognitive skill endowed by genetics. It is powerfully rooted in your behaviors—and in particular the extent to which you engage in questioning, observing, networking, and experimenting. Change your behaviors and you can change your creative capacity.

  One thing that hasn’t changed in the past few years is the fact that the business environment is experiencing more uncertainty and volatility than ever. Roughly fifty million new businesses are started worldwide each year. That means more new technologies are being offered with different value propositions than ever before. Companies that joined the Fortune 500 in 1950 could expect to be on the list for more than fifty years. Companies that join the list today can expect to be on the list for roughly fifteen years. Think about it. In the last fifteen years we’ve seen the emergence of Google, Facebook, Twitter, Uber, Airbnb, Tesla, Amazon Web Services, Amazon Alexa, and many other companies that are transforming industries. Why does this matter to you? It means that innovation is more important to company, and individual, success than it has ever been. And innovation starts with a creative idea.

  Since The Innovator’s DNA was first published we’ve had many people come to us and tell us their stories about how the ideas in this book have positively influenced their lives and careers. To illustrate, Eric, an executive MBA student, introduced himself at the beginning of one of our classes on creativity and innovation. Eric worked for a pharmaceutical company and mentioned that he hadn’t ever really seen himself as being creative. But he wanted to be more creative and was taking the class to see if there was anything he could learn that might actually help. We did a deep dive into The Innovator’s DNA and the years of research behind it—the research that helped the book win the 2011 Best Book on Innovation and Entrepreneurship from the Chartered Management Institute. Eric learned that business innovators get creative ideas by actively questioning the status quo, observing in new environments, networking for new ideas with people of diverse backgrounds, and testing the validity of one’s assumptions by experimenting with pilots and prototypes. He took on assignments to engage in each of these behaviors more frequently. One of the assignments was to write down fifteen to twenty questions each morning in a “QuestionStorming” exercise before starting work. These could be questions about specific issues in his department, or they could be broader questions about the company’s products, customers, sales and marketing techniques, HR practices, technologies, competitors, suppliers, or industry. Eric religiously wrote down the questions each morning before work, and three months later his boss pulled him aside and said, “Eric, something’s different. Over the last few weeks you have become a more strategic and valued thinker on our team. What has changed?” Eric explained his change in behaviors as a result of the class on creativity and innovation. Eric later told us, “Just w
riting down the questions each day was priming me to think about important issues for our department and company. I was able to raise those questions at appropriate times and also keep my eyes open for answers when I was observing and networking. It made a big difference in my ability to contribute important questions and ideas to my team. And my boss noticed a difference.” The class ended, and we didn’t expect to hear from Eric again. But three months later we received an email from Eric saying that he had been promoted to a position at corporate headquarters in the company’s strategic-planning function. He wanted to offer his thanks, because he felt the promotion was the direct result of what he had learned, and practiced, from The Innovator’s DNA.

  Anecdotal stories like Eric’s are nice . . . and can be inspiring. But we wanted to know whether engaging in the discovery behaviors—of questioning, observing, networking, and experimenting—could be empirically shown to lead to faster promotions across a broad sample of business professionals. So we conducted a multiyear study with two researchers who were not affiliated with the original research: Markus Baer, a highly published associate professor at Washington University in St. Louis who researches creativity, and Zach Rodgers, a Stanford PhD who is a research fellow at HEC Paris. The goal of the study was to determine whether individuals who more frequently engaged in questioning, observing, networking, and experimenting (at time one) were more likely to realize faster promotions and higher compensation inside established organizations (at time two). We studied six hundred business professionals over six years and discovered that individuals in large organizations who frequently engage in these behaviors are more likely to be corporate entrepreneurs and get faster promotions to senior leadership positions where they make more money.1 The bottom line is that The Innovator’s DNA model works for not only generating new ideas but also generating career success.