The Case for Innovating and Institutionalizing How We Define Questions by Stefaan Verhulst:
“In an age defined by artificial intelligence, data abundance, and evidence-driven rhetoric, it is tempting to believe that progress depends primarily on better answers. Faster models. Larger datasets. More sophisticated analytics. Yet many of the most visible failures in policy, innovation, and public trust today share a quieter origin: not bad answers, but badly framed questions.
What societies choose to ask, or fail to ask, determines what gets measured, what gets funded, and ultimately what gets built. Agenda-setting is not a preliminary step to governance; it is governance. And yet, despite its importance, the practice of defining questions remains largely informal, opaque, and captured by a narrow set of actors.
This is the gap the 100 Questions initiative seeks to address. Its aim is not philosophical reflection for its own sake, but something decidedly practical: accelerating innovation, research, and evidence-based decision-making by improving the way problems are framed in the first place.
Why questions matter more than we admit
Every major public decision begins long before legislation is drafted or funding allocated. It begins with scoping — deciding what the problem actually is. It moves to prioritization — choosing which issues deserve attention now rather than later. And it culminates in structuring the quest for evidence — determining what kinds of data, research, or experimentation are needed to move forward…(More)”.
