Innovation starts with the quality of your questions

Tom Barrett
5 min readOct 28, 2022

In the final publication of the October throughline we explore how to build a culture of innovation one question at a time.

Your Snapshot​

A quick synthesis of this issue to share

đź’ˇ Innovation starts with the quality of your questions. Asking the right questions leads to new possibilities and innovative solutions.

đź’ˇ We are often drawn to ideas because we want to fix problems; starting with an idea feels safe and more fun than starting with a problem.

đź’ˇ If we want an innovative culture in our teams, we need to start with questions instead of ideas.

💡 Trust and psychological safety create the culture for collective negative capability, which John Keats coined as “the ability to live with ambiguity and uncertainty.”

đź’ˇ Commit to action by being aware of your need for certainty, make space for ambiguity and uncertainty in development work, and build trust by encouraging questions.

#289 | October 28, 2022​ | Tom x Midjourney​

Siren Call of New Ideas

We often think of innovation as coming up with new ideas, but the reality is that most new ideas are combinations of existing ones.

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Tom Barrett
Tom Barrett

Written by Tom Barrett

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