Question-Driven Innovation: Achievements and Implications of Grand Quest Season 3
Institute for Future Strategy Issue Brief Vol. 50
“Question-Driven Innovation: Achievements and Implications of Grand Quest Season 3”
This issue brief introduces question-driven innovation as a new approach that emphasizes the importance of exploring “what the problem actually is” at a time when conventional problem-solving–oriented innovation is reaching its limits.
Particularly during periods of technological transition, the process of defining what the problem is becomes crucial. However, Korea’s existing innovation system has not sufficiently reflected this need. The brief therefore highlights the necessity of question-driven innovation. By making the conditions and assumptions underlying existing problems visible and re-examining the problems themselves, question-driven innovation functions as a higher-level approach that establishes the direction in which innovation should proceed. In this sense, it is presented as a key foundation for generating new forms of competitiveness.
The brief also introduces a concrete implementation model of question-driven innovation through the case of “Grand Quest Season 3” at Seoul National University. Season 3 is particularly meaningful in that it brought together researchers from multiple generations—centred around early-career scholars—to derive and refine challenging questions, thereby building a sustainable ecosystem of inquiry. It is also significant in that a wide range of challenging questions emerged across diverse fields, including robotics, space, energy, life sciences, and industrial AI.
Based on these findings, the brief presents several policy implications, emphasizing the need for a shift in the national R&D paradigm—from a solution-oriented approach to a problem-definition–oriented approach. In particular, it proposes the institutionalization of a concept-design process in which diverse research actors participate in refining key questions. At the same time, it underscores the importance of building an innovation ecosystem capable of accumulating and developing such questions over the long term.
