Fall in love with the problem

Ask any random student or colleague on campus what makes TU Delft unique and I dare bet that the response will be: “TU Delft students have a can-do mentality” and “We work on solutions for major societal challenges”. This also came up during a consultation round about the Rotterdam Campus in 2022 where one of the recommendations was to uphold the solution-oriented thinking. These are not unexpected answers, they are accurate and echo our institutional vision: TU Delft contributes to solving complex and urgent societal challenges.

I probably would have given the same answer yesterday. But that was before I read From pub idea to award-winning healthcare innovation in ‘NWO Onderzoek’. The statementof Menno Gravemaker, CEO of Momo Medical, in particular got me thinking: ‘Like many techies, we were too focused on our solution. What you actually need is to fall in love with the problem.’ What I now wonder is, to fulfil TU Delft’s  mission of making impact for a better society, should we reverse our thinking from solution-oriented tot challenge-oriented?

An answer can be useless if you do not have a good understanding of the problem

A brief anecdote about the space pen to illustrate the difference. Normal pens do not work in space because of zero gravity. The story goes that the Americans, focused on the solution, invested a lot of time and money in a special pen that would work in space while the Russians, focused on the problem, simply used a pencil. This story is of course much more nuanced, but it nevertheless illustrates how a difference in perspective can affect the outcome. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy story also shows that an answer (solution), in this case ‘42’, can be useless if you do not know what the question is. In other words if you do not understand the problem.

The better the connection between the problem and the solution, the greater the chance that an innovation will have a real impact. In the case of Momo Medical making impact requires the innovation to be actually used. The question is where do you start, with the problem or the solution? In both cases much of the innovation process should be focused at closely linking the solution and the problem. And a somewhat related questions: Can we achieve real transitions if we concentrate on the solution? Or should we question the system In which the problem occurs?

As a supporter of the golden middle road, my answer is a little of both and it depends on the field of research. But I do argue that it is imperative to know which  perspective you take when thinking about a problem (or a solution). And that you understand that looking at it from the other point of view can deliver new insights.

This is what happened when Momo Medical’s CEO grabbed the phone in the middle of the night to speak to a nurse on night shift. And it worked. There are now 150 people working at Momo Medical who are making an impact in the lives of nurses and patients.