As we come across new technologies, social trends or geopolitical events, we rely on our familiarity of similar experiences in the past to help make sense of these new events. Computers use keyboards based on typewriters. The Internet borrowed content structure and style from traditional newspapers. The design of online-shopping websites was at first modelled after malls.

However useful these prior experiences are in designing the present, we get caught up with the conventions used before, and they trap our
thinking. That's why asking dumb (or more accurately, naive) questions are so useful. That's the opinion of Michael Ray, in his book Creativity in Business. Creativity always begins with a question, and the quality of your creativity is determined by the quality of your questions, and by the way you frame your approach to circumstances, problems, needs, and opportunities, argues Ray.

It took the movie industry a decade or so after the first silent movies before it realised that a completely different cinematographic effect could be achieved by simply liberating the camera from the tripod.

So a dumb question is dumb in the same way as a child is wise. What's your industry's fixed, tripod-anchored movie camera? What dumb questions can you get people to ask?

But it's difficult to see those opportunities when you're immersed in the day-to-day stuff. Borrowing from McLuhan again: "I'm not sure who discovered water, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't a fish." A fish only becomes acutely aware of water only when it's taken out of it. Pretty dangerous for any business for it to be the fish out of water.

One way to do this safely is to look at other unrelated industries or
knowledge domains for vague similarities between activities or problem areas. Just how different is DNA replication from the shipping of products from the warehouse to store? The key is not to see a perfect fit, but to use these as lenses to your business.

Another anecdote, this time from Robert Sutton's book, Weird Ideas that Work, serves as an illustration.

A statistician, Abraham Wald, was asked to do some research on where to put extra armour on warplanes during World War II. The British and US air forces were concerned because many planes were being shot down. To find out where extra armour could be best applied, Wald put a mark in every bullet hole in the airplanes that returned from battle. He found that two major sections of the fuselage - one between the wings and the other between the tails - had far fewer bullet holes.

He decided to put the armour in these places, where he saw fewer, not more bullet holes. Why? Since the planes were hit randomly, and the ones he analysed had not been shot down, it stood to reason that it was the holes he wasn't seeing - in the planes that _weren't_ returning - that needed extra protection.

Hey you, get off out of your tripod!

An edited version first appeared in www.mediatoolbox.co.za