Think in Questions, not answers

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[{"type":"txt","id":"rich_1664883038790","data":"How to think in questions, not answers<\/b><\/p>A story of the moonshots project team at X<\/b><\/p>There is an anonymous team known as \"Moonshots\" <\/b>trying to reach out to X says, to open our minds to what the future could be, we ask the outsiders \u201cwhat ifs\u201d all around X. <\/p>This is particularly important in the earliest stages, where the 100+ ideas they investigate every year have a <5% chance of seeing their 1-year or 2-year birthdays. But no matter what part of X they visit, we\u2019ll see them following a trail of questions, hypotheses, and experiments, learning by iteration where a 10x better approach might be hiding \u2014 as it\u2019s never obvious.<\/p>Some of their latest what-ifs? <\/b> <\/p>1. What if you could read a plant like a book?<\/p>2. What if your pants could help you climb up the stairs? <\/p>3. What if all our plastic could be turned into anything we want?<\/p>4. What if understanding fish behaviour could make our seas healthier?<\/p>5. What if we could grow a building from a seed? <\/p>6. What if a swimming pool could power the entire planet? <\/p>What if these questions weren't just questions?<\/b><\/p>There\u2019s no way of knowing how these ideas are going to turn out in the long run. But they fuel their optimism that leads to solutions to the world\u2019s most unmanageable problems that are always within the reach of human imagination. <\/p> <\/b><\/p>"},{"type":"img","id":"img-uid-1664883038793","data":"633c1a8c80a82"},{"type":"txt","id":"rich_1664883038792","data":"We may have recognized a few things, like the computational agriculture project: Mineral<\/b>, the ocean health project: Tidal<\/b>, or the mobility project: Smartypants<\/b>. As for the more mysterious questions, they do refer to current X investigations and they hope to tell more about them as<\/p>\"life at a moonshot factory involves far more questions than answers\"<\/b>.<\/p>\nBut living like this isn\u2019t easy. Their brains crave certainty and clarity, and most professional environments train them better for delivering answers and short-term progress than for exploring huge questions and winding, risky roads. To find truly breakthrough ideas, they have to train themselves to break out of mental ruts and well-worn paths.<\/p>\nHere are a few of the helpful tricks X has found over the years to achieve this.<\/p>Try \u201cquestion bursts\u201d.<\/b> Hal Gregersen, at MIT\u2019s Sloan School of Management, has written the book on why brainstorming questions \u2014 rather than answers \u2014 works better for shifting perspective and opening up new possibilities. <\/p>We can learn how to do this by reading his excellent work and using his Question Burst Toolkit <\/i>in our work or in life.<\/p>Host \u201cbad idea brainstorms\u201d.<\/b> Want to turn down the volume of that little voice inside your head that makes you anxious about saying \u201csilly\u201d or \u201cwrong\u201d things? <\/p>Years ago, X\u2019s Rapid Evaluation team, which comes up with new moonshot ideas, started holding \u201cbad idea brainstorms\u201d to help us to get comfortable, letting our nuttiest stuff flow freely. They've just launched an online game to help us do it too \u2014 try it and tell them on social media (via @theteamatx)<\/p>\nPrototype it.<\/b> Meet Kathryn Zealand, head of the Smartypants project, she says it doesn\u2019t matter how janky and duct-tape it is, as long as it helps you learn \u2014everyone can prototype, even while working from home. Kathryn has even brought a prototyping, experimental mindset to her career.<\/p>One final point: <\/b><\/p>Don\u2019t underestimate the power of naivete. In a speech last year, X\u2019s Astro Teller told the Class of 2021, \u201cYou have a big advantage: you don\u2019t already know the answers!\u201d I know you\u2019re thinking,<\/b> \u201cI\u2019ve worked so hard to become an expert!\u201d<\/b> <\/p>But not knowing how things are \u201csupposed to be\u201d can actually be a secret superpower; our curiosity can lead us to questions that cast everything in a new light. So next time we're determined to take ourselves somewhere truly radical, we have to think about using great questions to blast us out of whatever\u2019s preventing us from seeing a world of new possibilities. <\/p>"}]

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