“Questions are the new answers,” said Prapti Jha, Co-Founder of We Speak Innovation, to a packed breakout room at the 2025 Front End of Innovation conference a few weeks ago.
She continued… in an age in which information is readily available at our fingertips (thanks GenAI and LLMs!), having the answer is no longer unique; but being able to harness innate human curiosity to ask disruptive, not-your-average questions has become a defining characteristic of game-changing leadership.
We need not look much further than prompt engineering — the practice of crafting and refining questions or instructions to garner responses from AI models — to see just how important it is to be a gifted examiner. Simple, basic questions in the engine yield sub-average responses. Whereas specific, creative, intentional questions yield strong quality of output.
Simple Prompt: Write a follow-up email to a customer after their onboarding session.
Creative Prompt: Act as a Customer Success Manager writing to a customer one week after onboarding. Assume they haven’t logged in yet. Craft a message that blends empathy, urgency, and value reinforcement — without sounding pushy. Include one data point and one open-ended question to spark a response.
Tip: Be specific, give clear instructions, and no need to say please or thank you 🙂
One of the best pieces of advice that was shared at the Front End of Innovation, particularly when it comes to navigating the world of AI, is to treat AI as we would any employee or teammate. Debate with it, make it your best brainstorm partner, provide clear context, challenge it to think differently… and ask it amazing questions.
I’ve been thinking about the power of questions ever since the Front End of Innovation — and even more so as I’ve dove into the world of prompt engineering. And it got me thinking… what are the top questions we should be asking as leaders? How can we go from basic to disruptive? Here are 3 to get you started:
Are we building innovation in, or bolting it on as an afterthought?
The Front End of Innovation conference kicked off with an incredibly powerful quote by Jamaar Smiley, Founder of the Smiley Experience.
“Innovation is not a thing; it’s a choice.”
A choice we get to make as leaders every single day. At the most simplistic of levels, will we be the leader who treats innovation as a core value — embedding it into the very fabric of our teams? Or will innovation happen by accident?
As you consider our answer to this question, consider the following: 83% of companies rank innovation as a top 3 priority, yet only 3% are ready to deliver on those innovation goals. The stats underscore the importance of building innovation in (versus bolting on) and to do so requires a few changes:
- Simply put… measure it! Leverage advanced analytics to gauge the frequency at which innovation occurs, the speed at which seedling ideas convert into transformative action, and the innovation ROI attribution. One of our favorite metrics for innovation? SQA Group’s Innovation Pipeline Conversion: borrowing the concept of a Sales pipeline, Innovation Pipeline Conversion measures the ease and success with which innovation advances within an organization and/or team (learn more here).
- Embed innovation into how team operations. From establishing corporate accelerators to holding an annual Day of Innovation for your team, create dedicated and protected time for your team to leave their comfort zone and enter their stretch zone. For myself? I block an hour a week dedicated to what I call “Protected Innovation Time” on my calendar — my time to research, experiment, dream, and ideate.
Related Reading: Why Knowing When to Bail Fuels Innovation
If I could describe our AI approach in one word, what word would I choose?
Embark on a game of word association for a moment and consider the word that would come to mind for you, your team, or your organization when it comes to your AI approach. What’s the first word that comes to mind? And based on that answer, what questions might you ask next.
For example, let’s say the word that comes to mind is “cautious.” You then might want to ask yourself things like:
- What evidence exists in our day-to-day that demonstrates we are cautious when it comes to AI?
- The opposite of cautious when it comes to AI, would be to be [insert phrase]
- What would a company/team that is less cautious be doing right now when it comes to AI?
- If we could move from cautious to [insert phrase from above] what positive impact could it have on our team/org?
- The thing I’ve always wanted us to do with AI that I’ve never said out loud is [insert phrase].
When you’re done prompting, take note of what you jotted down. What hidden clues exist in your answers as to decisions you need to make and behaviors you need to shift.
“Think of AI as your cognitive amplifier to what you are already doing,” said Shahid Azim, CEO, C10 Labs, from the big keynote stage at Front End of Innovation. Consider this wise advice and ask yourself, how might AI (especially when used as a cognitive amplifier) improve my answer to “If I could describe our AI approach in one word, what word would I choose?”
What problem is our competitor solving right now that we are not?
This question can be answered through two distinct lenses: the problem your organization’s competitor is solving, as well as the problems your peer leaders at competitive firms are tackling.
By having a handle on the focal points and strategic pursuits among your competitors, you can glean important insights into their maturity, potential for growth, as well as risk factors their trajectory poses to you. Consider how your answers might change as you explore several key categories such as:
- People — what are our competitors doing to combat declining employee engagement, team flight risk, diminished productivity, etc.
- Solutions — how do our competitors weave in voice of customer, enhance features and capabilities, and introduce next-gen digital capability that wows
- Operations — when it comes to problems like organizational waste, reworks and defects, and manual toil, what steps are our competitors taking to combat them
- Futures — if we look out 3 years from now, what problems will our competitors have solved versus the ones we are still battling?
- Past Success — what problems did our competitors possibly have years ago that are no longer on their docket to address?
Write any thoughts that come to mind; this is your own version of unstructured data which you can augment with consumer insights and readily available research. But the key here is to remind yourself of the power of your gut and your own human ingenuity first.
Our ability to ask deeply thoughtful, probing questions is within us — both from what comes naturally, as well as the curiosity muscle that we can continue to hone.
So… what’s the question you’ve been afraid to ask? What are you most curious about? And what’s the prompt you could ask to unlock the innovative pathway forward?