Are you solving the wrong problem?

The useful part

I cut my teeth getting grounded in principles of design thinking when I launched a strategic design MBA during my university teaching years. Design thinking is essentially a problem-solving process that is 50% qualitative research and 50% the application of design principles such as visualizing data and prototyping. In the design thinking world, we are well aware that 80% of the problem-solving process is grounded in making sure you even ask the right question.

How it works

• That's my problem." It had less to do with how pretty their deck was.
• All great problem-solving starts with identifying the actual problem to solve, which is discovered with really great questions.
• That's why a recent conversation with Jim Szafranski, CEO of Prezi, was affirming.
• First, as an MIT graduate student in the late 1980s, applying early AI techniques in steel mill production.
• Again decades later, leading a global presentation platform, Prezi, into the age of generative AI.

What to take from it

"The closer you are to what the ultimate point of what you're doing is, the better," he told me.

Details worth keeping

before you go running down the rabbit hole of possible solutions. He had learned the same lesson—twice—through an entirely different path. The answer surprised Szafranski's colleagues: "I have a deadline tomorrow.