THE INNOVATOR'S ATTITUDE

A monthly newsletter with the objective of helping leaders innovate profitably by providing them with best practices, models, and different perspectives.

On Known and Unknown Unknowns

Reducing innovation risk is about answering the right question at the right time. For truly innovative ideas, these answers are hardly complete and finite. But the mere act of attempting to answer tough questions is already an illuminating exercise.

We usually begin with known unknowns, or in other words, the things we know we don’t know. Those are usually expressed as assumptions and hypotheses about behaviours and outcomes.

Assumptions are researched, while hypotheses are tested. With some practice anyone can learn how to formulate each of those. Identifying the known unknowns relies on past experience.