I’m not sure when I first realized that one of my life’s passions was collecting questions. I guess it probably had to be early in my corporate career when market research became a greater focus in my job. If you have questions that work in one situation, you definitely want to make sure you use them again. This is especially true if using the same questions allows you to track results over time.
As innovative strategy grew to become a bigger professional theme, then intriguing, out-of-the-ordinary creative thinking questions moved to the top of my interest list. By that point, I was buying books of questions, exploring magazines and reality TV shows for ways to imagine ideas, and creating my own questions to energize the early versions of Brainzooming strategy activities.
5 Ways Creative Thinking Questions Serve You
Yes, I love great creative thinking questions and have for a long time.
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Here are five specific ways that they can serve you if you catch the passion for them, too.
1. They are like jumping off platforms
A question can lift you up to gain an overarching view of an issue. From this new height, you see less of the detail and more of the big patterns that are at work. It can be the ideal place to make sure you are addressing the factors that will create big impacts.
2. They are like trail guides
Questions can help focus you on a target, area, or range of possibilities along an innovation journey. Suppose you’d have missed the new perspective and gotten lost? Great questions will prompt you to consider critical perspectives for productive, innovative thinking.
3. They are a way to clear space
When working individually or with a group, especially, directed questions can reduce your focus on non-consequential areas that suck up your work energy, but don’t hold much future promise. Instead, the right questions create open areas to look at new, unaddressed possibilities.
4. They will transport you to new places
It’s easy to be stuck in the everyday when that’s all you see and think about every day. Innovation demands going beyond today. Use questions to push you into new topic areas or opportunities that wouldn’t happen amid your routine daily activities.
5. They can shift your perspective
Questions can open your eyes to embracing someone else’s perspective. They can also help you look at what’s familiar to you from completely new directions or with a different intensity of point of view.
What do you love about great creative thinking questions?
If you are a part of the Brainzooming family, I’m guessing creative thinking questions are something you think about, too. Message me and let me know what excites you about your best creative thinking questions. - Mike Brown
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