Imaginative Gridlock

“The second attribute of imaginatively gridlocked relationship systems is a continual search for new answers to old questions rather than an effort to reframe the questions themselves. In the search for the solution to any problem, questions are always more important than answers because the way one frames the question, or the problem, already predetermines the range of answers one can conceive in response.

The critical difference between what is now popularly called a paradigm shift and what might otherwise be simply an innovation involves precisely this change in focus from answer to question. For example, at some point in history someone realized that solid wheels could be made much lighter by cutting away pie-shaped slices and leaving only spokes. That was certainly a useful, facilitating innovation that produced a new answer to the question of how to overcome the cumbersomeness of wheels. But the paradigm shift of transportation that opened imaginative new ways of thinking was the wheel itself! Innovations are new answers to old questions; paradigm shifts reframe the question, change the information that is important, and generally eliminate previous dichotomies.”
~Edwin Friedman