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1-Page Summary of The Power of Why

The Story of SawStop

Steve Gass had a curiosity about how things worked from an early age. He loved taking them apart and putting them back together, but he also got hurt when he was four years old while playing with his father’s tools. As a patent attorney, Gass wanted to invent something that would help people avoid getting injured by power tools, so he invented SawStop.

SawStop has a sensor that detects wood and human flesh. When the saw blade is rotating at high speeds, it will stop when it senses any obstruction. It uses hot dogs to test its system before releasing it in the market.

Innovation and Curiosity

Gass has always been curious. He asked himself, “Hey, I wonder if there’s a way to stop the blade fast enough to prevent injury?” This question drove him to find an answer.

Curiosity is the driving force behind his life. He asks questions and gets answers, which has led to an innovative solution to a dangerous problem: saw injuries. The US Consumer Product Safety Commission reports that Americans suffer 67,300 medically-treated blade contact injuries annually. In 2002, Popular Science magazine listed SawStop as one of the “100 Best Innovations” for the year.

After testing his invention, Gass decided to market it. He partnered with two patent attorneys and started a company that manufactures and sells the product. He is passionate about what he does because inventing, improving, and marketing the product are challenging and interesting activities for him.

Questions Count Most

Inventors like Gass are great at questioning their ideas. They ask themselves, “Why won’t this work?” and “What’s wrong with it?” Most people don’t think that way, though. Instead of asking questions about how to improve things, they stop investigating after the first answer they find. It’s crucial to keep asking questions if you want to come up with meaningful innovations.

Most people stop asking questions after they become adults. Children, however, are curious about the world and keep asking “why” question nonstop. They ask it in various forms such as:

Children Are Intuitively Curious

Children are naturally curious, and they ask a lot of questions. They’re also intuitive about experimenting and testing things out. Babies experiment with their surroundings, just like Steve Gass experiments in the kitchen to come up with new recipes for his customers. But unfortunately, as children grow older, many parents tell them that it’s not okay to keep asking questions. When kids ask “Why?” all the time and get told “Because I said so,” they learn that questioning isn’t allowed or appreciated.

When parents discourage young children’s curiosity, they’re stifling the child’s natural inquisitiveness. Curiosity helps us learn and grow. Children who are encouraged to ask questions grow up to be smarter than those who aren’t.

Curiosity is the key to success in today’s economy. Those who are curious and ask a lot of questions will find innovative solutions to problems that seem impossible to solve. They refuse to accept the status quo and keep asking more questions until they come up with answers. This is critical for innovation, as well as business strategy.

Rote Answers

Many schools don’t help students develop their curiosity. Teachers are like parents, in that they have all the answers and want to shut down any questions from the children. Schools expect students to memorize information without thinking about whether it’s right or wrong. As a result, many students decide not to ask questions because they know their teachers will just be angry with them for not knowing something already.