The Best Questions Might Be Answers In Disguise

The obsession with old questions tends to disappoint those thirsty for new answers… New questions might be our best bet.

Image by Gerd Altmann

When I was a teenager I wanted to create new things, things that had never seen before. Stuff like coming up with new chords and notes… I know. How naive! In my defence, the internet was only beginning to take off back then, so it wasn’t as ostensible as it is now that everything has been done, said, thought and asked before. Has it, though?

Of course not everything has already been invented. Innovation is everywhere, innovation is exponential. Innovation is so far ahead of most of us that we simply cannot even begin to fathom the novelty headed our way. Thus, although everything may appear to have been created already, we’re simply not the first ones to come up with something new, we’re simply not fast or brave enough to ask the next unanswered question.

The more I think about it, the clearer it becomes to me that the key to innovation isn’t in the answers but in the questions. We might not like the answers we receive, and this might push us to keep asking the same questions until the response is to our satisfaction.