Why Stupid Questions Can Lead to Big Business

If you want to grow your business, start asking stupid questions. The daft, obvious, slightly embarrassing questions are often the ones that lead somewhere big, because they poke at things everyone else has stopped noticing. Any question, however trivial it sounds, can turn into something great if you actually pursue it instead of dismissing it.

The melted chocolate bar that became the microwave

In 1945, an engineer called Percy Spencer was working on radar technology for the military. Standing near the equipment, he noticed the chocolate bar in his pocket had melted, and instead of shrugging it off, he asked why.

It was, on the face of it, a ridiculous question to be chewing over while building defence technology. But Spencer kept experimenting, placing different foods near the radar and watching the microwaves heat them from the inside out. That trivial question about a gooey chocolate bar led directly to the microwave oven. A daft observation became a technology in millions of kitchens.

Why we kill our best questions

Most people never chase their stupid questions because they are afraid of looking stupid asking them. The obvious question feels beneath us, or too simple to be worth raising, so we swallow it and carry on doing things the way they have always been done.

But "why does it work like this?" and "why can't it be different?" are exactly the questions that expose lazy assumptions. The reason they feel stupid is that everyone has stopped asking them, which is precisely why the answers are still lying there, unclaimed.

How to put this to work

Give your daft questions somewhere to go. Why does our content always look like this? Why do we post the way we do? Why does everyone in our industry say the same thing? Treat each one as a thread worth pulling rather than a silly thought to suppress.

Most will lead nowhere, and that is fine. You are prospecting. Every so often a question that sounded stupid out loud will crack open a genuinely fresh idea, a new angle, or a better way of doing things. The people who innovate are simply the ones who did not feel too clever to ask.

Meet Brian

Turning offbeat questions and curious observations into content that actually stands out is exactly what Brian is for. He is our AI-powered comedy marketing machine, built to find the fresh angle others walk past.

Take Brian for a spin and see where a stupid question takes you.