Stop Starting with Solutions: The Hidden Skill Great Innovators Share
Published Mar 6, 2026
“If I were given one hour to save the planet, I would spend 59 minutes defining the problem and one minute resolving it.” - Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein’s quote is famous, but most organizations operate in reverse. Faced with a new challenge, teams rush into solution mode: brainstorming features, scoping projects, and building roadmaps.
The result? Lots of activity, very little breakthrough.
Meaningful innovation doesn’t start with answers. It starts with a better question.
The Innovation Mistake Almost Everyone Makes
In many organizations, the default lens is business efficiency: How do we reduce costs? How do we grow faster? How do we optimize this metric?
Those are valid questions, but they’re not always the right questions to begin with.
As innovation leader Fernando Ma notes, when you approach a problem only with a business lens, you naturally optimize for efficiency. When you step back and start from the actual needs of customers, you often arrive at very different conclusions. The “problem” shifts from, for example, “How do we make this process cheaper?” to “Why does this process exist for customers in the first place?”
That shift in framing can change everything.
What It Really Means to Define the Problem
Defining the problem is not a line item you check off before brainstorming. It’s a deliberate exploration: questioning assumptions, interrogating symptoms, and looking at the broader system that produced them.
Two types of problems matter here:
- Keystone problems are specific, known obstacles that, once solved, unlock progress—like the keystone at the top of a stone arch that holds the entire structure together
- Root problems are the deeper system issues that create those constraints in the first place.
Asking Better “Why”s
One simple but powerful tool for getting beyond surface-level symptoms is repeatedly asking why. Often this is called the “Five Whys,” suggesting you ask “why” repeatedly until you start to uncover the root cause of a problem. You don’t need to ask exactly five questions, you just need to go until you arrive at a statement that feels fundamental.
“Why is adoption low?”
“Because the sign-up is confusing.”
“Why is it confusing?”
“Because it reflects our org chart, not the user’s workflow.”
Asking why’s allow teams to dig deeper and not stop at a solution too soon. Often people will solve the symptom of a problem, then wonder why the problem reappears in a new form a few months later.
From Problem to Possibility
Once you’ve rigorously defined the problem, you’re in a position to ask a different kind of question: not just “How do we fix this?” but “What might be possible if we transformed this entirely?”
That’s where breakthrough innovation begins—when you combine a deep understanding of people and problems with the courage to imagine new possibilities.
In Innovation Strategy: Tools and Frameworks for Business, Harvard Online dives into this discipline of problem framing: how to uncover keystone and root problems, how to use methods like repeated “why” questioning, and how to move from well-defined problems to bold, viable solutions.
If you’re ready to spend more of your “59 minutes” where it really counts, explore the course and start transforming how you approach innovation.