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Killer Questions – How does the quality of the question improve the quality of the idea?

Phil McKinney
Phil McKinney
1 min read
The Innovators Studio podcast cover art: Killer Questions – How does the quality of the question improve the quality of the idea?

I just posted a new podcast titled “Killer Questions”. The basic precept is that the difference between “good ideas” and “great ideas” is in the quality of the questions being asked. Rather than asking the typical “brainstorming” questions such as:

  • Come up with a new product that will generate xxx in 3 years
  • Build a better x
  • Make x more flexible

Ask non-typical questions such as:

  • -What happens when x does y
  • -What if the opposite were true ….

Improving The Quality of the Questions

My interest in the Socratic Method and the glaring gap I found between Socrates’s method of teaching with questions and the way innovation and ideation are “taught” today, started me down the path of searching for specific questions that would challenge others to find opportunities for new ideas—questions I now call Killer Questions.

It took me a while to determine them, but in the end, I hit upon the old engineering standby: Find something that works, and figure out why.

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Phil McKinney is an innovator, podcaster, author, and speaker. He is the retired CTO of HP. Phil's book, Beyond The Obvious, shares his expertise and lessons learned on innovation and creativity.


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