A collaborative group must have a clear problem to solve — a challenge to focus on and pit itself against — or the members of the group will pit themselves against each other and the group itself will become its problem.

The job of a planner is to provide a group with a productive problem to divert it from destructive internecine warring.

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The most common form of idiocy in the business world is trying to solve problems before the problems have been articulated. Problem-finding and problem-shaping is a thousand times harder and more painful than problem-solving, which is why doers like to skip to the doing.

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The best innovation research concentrates on problem-finding and problem-forming. Marketing research is best for informing problem-solving, where the questions and possible answers are already known. The roads are already laid and paved, and the question is “which route should we take?”