Why Do Questions Enhance Creativity? Why are questions so important to the creative process?

Questions create opportunities while solutions converge on a single answer.

The more questions you have, the more exploration you’ll do. If you have an answer, you won’t be motivated to search for anything different.

This is why you see so many companies that are very successful early on and then loose their ability to be creative or innovate. They weren’t able to see that everything was changing while they were answering the same out-dated questions. This is how Yahoo was overtaken by Google and how Netflix crushed Blockbuster. This happened because these companies had good answers to questions that were becoming increasingly irrelevant.

Netflix asked the question “Why can’t we send DVD’s in the mail?” Had Blockbuster began asking this question earlier, they might have been able to put up a fight.

Questions Change Your Focus & Strategy

It’s been shown in the laboratory that problem solving skills and creativity can be decreases during the creative process. Creativity researchers give a math problem to one group that requires “strategy A” to solve and then time how long it takes people to solve the problem. The second group is given the same problem, but before they are given “strategy A” problem they’re given a “strategy B” problem, which requires a different method to solve. People that were presented with a “strategy B” question before getting a “strategy A” question were far worse at solving the problem.

Why? Because researchers had essentially given the participants’ brains an answer before having a question. The automatic response was to apply the strategy that worked before instead of looking for a new strategy. Because they had answers that worked in the past, they assumed it’d work in a similar-looking situation. Interestingly, this happens even if you tell the participant that they shouldn’t do it.

This pattern can be seen throughout your career as well. Creative people generally go through several predictable stages in their career. They begin with very low knowledge and skills and, thus, low creativity. As they spend more time in the industry they become more and more creative. However, at a certain point their creativity falls through the floor. Even though the creative is more knowledageable and more skilled than ever before, creativity plummits.

The reason is the same as before… the longer you apply the same knowledge and skills, the more you begin to rely on them to solve the next problem. They’re essentially answering questions that are increasingly irrelevant.

This is why it’s so rare to see an organization or an artist that is able to stay ahead of the curve for long periods of time. George Carlin was a top-touring comedian for over 4 decades. A feat that hasn’t been touched in the modern age of stand-up comedy. The only way artists and organizations become, and then remain relevant is by asking high-quality questions and allowing those questions to evolve throughout their creative career.

Questions Guide Us Throughout The Creative Process

Questions help to launch the creative process in the first place by creating creative conflict. Questions such as “Why can’t…” or “Why isn’t…” highlight problems that can be solved through creativity. Questions can also begin the generative process of creativity by asking the question “How can…”

The questions asked at the beginning of the creative process can mean the difference between a highly original product and a “very good, but unoriginal” one.

Here’s a great example of how questions can completely change the creative process early on. Charles Darwin is one of the most famous and highly-regarded scientists of all time. Why was Darwin able to see what so many other biologists couldn’t? Was Darwin simply smarter than the rest?

Actually, no. In fact, he was sub-par academically. His genius came from changing the question being asked. Every other biologist during this era was obsessed with discovering new species. They continually asked themselves “How are these two animals different?” The genius of Darwin was being the first to flip the question around and ask “How are these two animals the same?”

In the end, it never mattered how smart any of the other biologists were because the question would never have lead them in the right direction. Creativity solved the problem of evolution… not intelligence, skill, or knowledge. No amount of asking how animals are different will lead you to the theory of evolution because evolution requires sameness.

“The formulation of a problem is often more essential than its solution… to raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a enw angle, requires imagination and marks real advance in science.” ~ Albert Einstein

 

Jared Volle, M.S.

Creativity & Innovation