The Only Dumb Question Is the Question You Don't Ask

Creativity begins with having questions - asking them and exploring them

Creativity always begins with a question.  Why?  What if?  How? etc The quality of your creativity is determined by the quality of your questions - by the way you frame your approach to circumstances, problems, needs, and opportunities.  A creative approach makes life a questioning process

 Milan Kundera, the Czech novelis says:

 I ask questions.  The stupidity of people comes from having an answer for everything.  The wisdom of the novel comes from having a question for everything.

What is a question?"

A list I have (don't know from where - sorry) says:

A question is an opening to creation.

A question is an unsettled and unsettling issue.

A question is an invitation to creativity.

A question is a beginning of adventure.

A question is seductive foreplay.

A question is a disguised answer.

A question pokes and prods that which has not yet been poked and prodded.

A question is a point of departure.

A question has no end and no beginning.

A question wants a playmate.

Can you add to the this list?

If you want to be creative - ask Dumb Questions

The Only Dumb Question Is the Question You Don't Ask

Implicitly or explicitly, creativity always begins with a question.  And in both your business and personal lives, the quality of your cresitivity is determined by the quality of your questions-by the way you frame your approach to circumstances, problems, needs, and opportunities.  A creative approach makes life a questioning process.

 In the same way, when you bring creative questioning into your ife, you don't care what you find.  You do it for the adventure itself, without defining expectations.  Even if you rather expect red, you're as pleased to find blue.

 If you pursue a questing question, the end is usually creative, even if it's unexpected.  Columbus's question was, "Is there a sea route to lndia?" His answer was the astonishing discovery of a new continent and evidence about the shape of the world.

Asking questions as dumb as the kind you fear people might dismiss with "Of course not, dummy" takes a great deal of initial courage and eventual endur­ance.  You have to draw deeply upon your essence quality of strength because you are flouting public opinion, swimming against the current.
 

Young children ask dumb questions about everything.  

What's behind a rainbow?

What color is the inside of my brain?

 What's inside ofa rock?

Does the sky have an end to it?

You once asked questions like that, too.  That's how you leamed about the world.  But sooner or later your authorities-parents, teachers-gave you the message that such questions were not welcome.  You became more careful.  Your inner voice began to build a defense against questions.  You intemalised adult laughter, scom, and irritation, and learned to avoid the questioning creative process.  Pretty soon the questions stopped coming to you; and cynicism set in instead.

By then you had lost a very useful ability and tool. 

What do you think?

Strategic Marketing Planning

The Key Factors of Strategic Planning

There are a number of key factors to consider with any planning. The areas are as follows:
Focus refers to concentrating limited resources in the areas that will reap the most rewards.
Goals are what we are aiming to achieve from our efforts and investment. All too often that is simply equated with money and does not consider other, more important factors.
Competitive Advantage refers to the fact that we are operating in a competitive environment. If we are not aware of the fact that there are other players competing with us for the same client’s money, then we are likely to lose.
Superior Performance. What is important for the organisation, is to plan a position which takes into account all of the players.  Firstly the strategist must achieve superior performance to the competitor.  At the same time the strategy must be in line with the strengths and weaknesses of the organisation and must also meet the needs of the market.   A successful strategy is one which gives a stronger matching of organisational strengths with market needs than that provided by the competition.
Sustainable Competitive Advantage (SCA), which suggests that there are many possible good ideas, but which one will remain yours (that the competitors cannot take away) and work for the longest time?
Creativity and Innovation.  What gives a strategy its competitive impact is the creative element and the will of the mind that conceived it to make it work.
Flexibility - The best strategies are flexible and allow for innovation.  They are based on information, which gives us a series of probabilities to work with.  Strategy is vulnerable to reality.  One cannot totally predict the future.  All business decisions are probabilistic.  There is always a chance of the plan failing.
Basic Conceptual Simplicity - Complicated, long range plans rarely work and require constant adaptation and change - usually into another detailed long range plan.  We must remember that any strategic plan is based partly on historic information and partly on future prediction.  Once written it also becomes part of history.
The Ability to be Implemented.  A wonderfully conceived and crafted strategy is meaningless unless it can be implemented to achieve the Mission and Goals of the organisation