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Showing posts with label PO Thinking Lab. Show all posts
Showing posts with label PO Thinking Lab. Show all posts

Thursday, October 29, 2026

PO Prompts #005 — What If Yesterday's Success Stories Were Forbidden? | AI Careers and New Possibilities

What If Yesterday's Success Stories Were Forbidden?



One Strange Question. A New Possibility.

An Indian MBA campus story, Sam Altman's challenge to conventional ambition, and a practical PO–AI Thinking Lab for discovering opportunities that don't yet have a name.


The Question That Started It All

Every generation grows up admiring the success stories of the generation before it.

Students study successful companies.

Business schools teach established management practices.

Young professionals seek prestigious careers.

Entrepreneurs examine proven business models.

There is considerable value in learning from experience.

But what happens when the world changes faster than our definitions of success?

What if the career everyone wants today was designed for yesterday's economy?

What if the next extraordinary business opportunity does not resemble any company we currently admire?

And what if AI could help us discover possibilities beyond established career and business models?

These questions become particularly interesting in light of a recent observation by Sam Altman.

The News That Inspired This Episode

In an October 29, 2026, Times of India report, Sam Altman was quoted criticizing the tendency of MBA students to pursue opportunities that had been fashionable years earlier.

Speaking in an interview with Stanford Graduate School of Business, according to the report, Altman encouraged ambitious people to explore new opportunities emerging from technological change.

His central concern was not that established careers have no value. It was that aspiring leaders may overlook emerging opportunities when they focus too heavily on familiar success stories.

The report also described Altman's view that AI could enable new companies and significantly change how work is performed.

Source: The Times of India — Sam Altman on MBA students and new opportunities

This reported observation offers a powerful starting point for lateral thinking.

But rather than merely agreeing or disagreeing with Altman, let's introduce a deliberate provocation.

What if yesterday's success stories were forbidden?


1. The Story: Aditi and the Placement Race

It was placement season at a prestigious Indian business school.

The campus was buzzing with excitement.

Students were preparing for interviews with consulting firms, investment banks, multinational corporations and established technology companies.

There were workshops on résumé building, mock interviews, aptitude tests and case-study preparation.

Everyone seemed to know what success looked like.

A prestigious employer.

An attractive salary.

An impressive job title.

A career path that others would recognize and admire.

Aditi, a final-year MBA student, was among the most promising candidates in her batch.

She had excellent academic results, strong communication skills and several internship experiences.

Yet she felt strangely uncertain.

The familiar question

One evening, Aditi opened ChatGPT.

She typed:

"What are the best career opportunities for an MBA graduate in the AI era?"

The response was impressive.

It presented career options, skill requirements, industry trends and recommended learning paths.

Consulting.

Product management.

Corporate strategy.

Business analytics.

Technology leadership.

Entrepreneurship.

The answer was sensible.

But Aditi noticed something.

Most of the recommendations resembled paths that previous generations of successful graduates had already followed.

She wondered:

If AI is changing the world so dramatically, why am I still planning my future by looking backward?

The professor's unusual assignment

The next morning, during an innovation class, Professor Rao introduced a challenge.

“Imagine,” he said, “that every successful career path and business model from the past five years has become unavailable.”

The students laughed.

“That would eliminate most of our placement choices,” someone replied.

“Exactly,” said the professor.

He wrote a statement on the board:

PO: You are forbidden to copy yesterday's successful careers or business models.

Aditi raised her hand.

“Then how do we know what to pursue?”

Professor Rao replied:

“Perhaps that is the question you should be asking.”

The classroom fell silent.

For the first time, the students were not being asked to choose among established opportunities.

They were being challenged to imagine opportunities that might not yet exist.

The discovery

Aditi returned to ChatGPT.

But this time, she did not ask for the best jobs.

She asked:

"What important problems are emerging because AI is changing how people live and work? Which of these problems might require entirely new professional roles, services or organizations?"

The conversation changed.

Instead of merely ranking careers, AI began helping her explore emerging needs.

Who would help small businesses evaluate AI-generated decisions?

Who would design trustworthy human–AI workflows?

Who would help local organizations adapt AI tools to their languages, customers and working practices?

Who would investigate failures when autonomous systems made mistakes?

Who would help professionals preserve accountability while delegating routine work to AI?

Aditi had not discovered a guaranteed career.

She had discovered something potentially more valuable.

A new way of searching for opportunities.

And it began with a strange question.

The characters, institution and classroom events in this story are fictional. They illustrate the PO thinking method and are not presented as a real incident.


2. The Hidden Assumption: Success Means Following a Successful Path

Many students and professionals make career decisions by studying people who have already succeeded.

This is understandable.

Successful examples provide evidence, inspiration and practical guidance.

But they can also influence what we consider possible.

Consider some familiar assumptions.

Assumption 1: Prestigious careers are necessarily the best careers.

A recognized job title may provide status, income and opportunity. But it does not automatically guarantee suitability, satisfaction or long-term resilience.

Assumption 2: Established industries offer the most attractive opportunities.

Mature industries may provide excellent careers. Yet emerging needs can also create opportunities that are not reflected in conventional placement lists.

Assumption 3: The most popular career choice is probably the safest.

Popularity does not establish future security. Economic conditions, technological capabilities and employer needs can change.

Assumption 4: A new opportunity must resemble an existing job.

Sometimes new technologies create combinations of responsibilities that do not fit established professional categories.

Assumption 5: AI should tell us which career to choose.

AI can organize information and compare options. But its more interesting contribution may be helping us discover possibilities we have not considered.

The challenge is not to reject existing career paths.

It is to avoid treating them as the complete universe of opportunity.

A better question

Instead of asking:

“Which successful career should I follow?”

Ask:

“What important problems are emerging, and what new capabilities might be needed to solve them?”

That shift prepares us for PO.


3. Understanding PO: The Escape Technique

Edward de Bono developed lateral-thinking techniques to help people move beyond established patterns.

One such technique is escape.

In escape provocation, we identify something normally taken for granted and temporarily remove it.

The purpose is not to argue that the assumption should disappear in reality.

The purpose is to discover what becomes visible when we imagine its absence.

For this episode, the assumption is:

Established success stories provide the natural starting point for future career and business decisions.

Now remove that assumption.

The PO provocation

PO: Yesterday's successful career paths and business models cannot be copied.

Imagine that for one week:

You cannot choose a career simply because it is prestigious.

You cannot pursue a business idea merely because another startup has succeeded with it.

You cannot use an established job title as your starting point.

You must begin with emerging problems, changing needs and unexplored possibilities.

What would you investigate?

Who would you talk to?

What would you ask AI?

Which skills would suddenly become relevant?

This is where deliberate movement begins.

The provocation is not a literal career restriction.

It is a temporary thinking experiment.


4. The PO–AI Thinking Lab

Our refined PO–AI Thinking Lab follows six stages:

FOCUS → PROVOKE → MOVE → GENERATE → JUDGE → ACCOMPLISH

The first stages draw on Edward de Bono's methods of provocation and movement. The integration with generative AI, critical evaluation and practical experimentation is the AIYING extension.

Let's apply the framework to Aditi's challenge.

Stage 1 — FOCUS: What Are We Really Trying to Achieve?

Aditi's initial question was:

"Which MBA career should I choose?"

But that question already assumes that the correct opportunity can be found among recognizable career categories.

A more fundamental question is:

“How can I build a meaningful, economically viable and adaptable professional future in a rapidly changing world?”

This is a broader and potentially more useful focus.

Questions for reflection

What does career success mean to me?

Is it primarily income, security, independence, learning, social contribution or some combination?

Which abilities do I genuinely enjoy developing?

What kinds of problems motivate me?

What constraints must I respect?

What opportunities might I overlook because they do not have familiar names?

Aditi's initial assumptions

She identifies four assumptions:

  1. Her MBA qualification should lead to a conventional management role.

  2. A prestigious employer is the best evidence of a good career decision.

  3. New opportunities are too uncertain to investigate seriously.

  4. AI is primarily useful for comparing existing career choices.

She does not need to reject these assumptions permanently.

She needs to examine them.

FOCUS outcome: Redefine the objective from selecting a prestigious job to discovering a sustainable professional direction.


Stage 2 — PROVOKE: Remove the Familiar Paths

Now Aditi introduces the escape provocation:

PO: I am forbidden to copy any successful career path or business model from the previous five years.

Imagine that conventional consulting, banking, product-management and startup models are unavailable as templates.

This does not mean that the underlying skills become useless.

Analytical thinking, financial literacy, communication, operations and leadership remain valuable.

But Aditi cannot simply imitate the familiar professional destination.

She must search for something different.

The immediate discomfort

How will she explain her choice to recruiters?

How will she estimate income?

How will she know whether an opportunity is real?

What skills should she acquire?

These concerns are legitimate.

But during the provocation stage, she temporarily postpones judgment.

The goal is to expand the space of possibilities before evaluating them.

PROVOKE outcome: Remove dependence on familiar success models as the starting point.


Stage 3 — MOVE: Discover What the Provocation Reveals

Provocation alone is not enough.

We must move from the unusual statement toward useful concepts.

Let's apply several movement approaches.

Movement A — Extract the principle

What principle might emerge from the prohibition on copying old success models?

Build your future around emerging problems, not merely established job titles.

This principle can guide practical exploration without requiring us to abandon conventional careers.

Movement B — Examine the positive aspects

What might be useful about temporarily ignoring familiar career templates?

Aditi may notice opportunities that placement rankings overlook.

She may explore combinations of business and technical capabilities.

She may discover organizations that need new kinds of services.

She may identify problems that established companies have not prioritized.

She may become more willing to test ideas before committing to a career direction.

Movement C — Explore consequences

If graduates stopped relying exclusively on familiar career categories, what might happen?

Some would begin studying emerging customer and organizational problems.

Others would explore new combinations of existing skills.

Some might discover opportunities within established companies rather than outside them.

Universities might introduce more problem-discovery projects alongside conventional placement preparation.

Employers might recruit for capabilities and outcomes rather than only established titles.

These are possibilities, not predictions.

Movement D — Identify differences

Compare two ways of exploring a career.

Career-first approach:

Choose a profession → Study its requirements → Acquire qualifications → Apply for roles.

Problem-first approach:

Identify an important problem → Understand who experiences it → Investigate possible solutions → Determine which capabilities are needed → Test a professional opportunity.

The two approaches can complement each other.

But the second may reveal directions that the first overlooks.

Movement E — Find useful circumstances

Where could this approach be especially valuable?

During technological transitions.

When industries face unfamiliar regulatory or operational challenges.

When organizations adopt new AI capabilities.

When local communities have unmet needs.

When professional roles combine disciplines that have traditionally been separate.

The movement insight

Aditi begins with an impossible restriction.

She arrives at a practical principle:

Don't merely search for a job title. Search for a valuable problem that your capabilities could help solve.

MOVE outcome: Shift from career imitation toward problem-led opportunity discovery.


5. Stage 4 — GENERATE: Five New Possibility Directions with AI

Now Aditi uses generative AI to expand the directions uncovered by PO.

The following examples are exploratory concepts, not verified job openings or forecasts.

Possibility 1 — Human–AI Workflow Designer

As organizations introduce AI into everyday work, they must decide which activities can be automated and which require human judgment.

A possible professional opportunity is helping organizations design workflows that combine human expertise with AI capabilities.

For example, a small business might use AI to prepare customer communications, but retain human approval for sensitive decisions.

A workflow designer could help identify tasks, responsibilities, controls and measures of success.

Skills to investigate: Process mapping, business analysis, AI literacy, change management and evaluation.

Question to test: Are organizations willing to pay for help redesigning specific workflows around AI?

Possibility 2 — AI Decision Accountability Specialist

AI-assisted decisions can create difficult questions.

Who checks the output?

Who approves consequential actions?

What evidence supports a recommendation?

How are errors detected and corrected?

Organizations may need people who understand both business decisions and AI governance.

Aditi could investigate opportunities related to decision oversight, documentation, escalation processes and accountability.

Skills to investigate: Risk management, responsible AI, governance, auditing and organizational processes.

Question to test: Which organizations have unresolved accountability problems in their current AI workflows?

Possibility 3 — Local-Language AI Service Innovator

India has enormous linguistic, cultural and organizational diversity.

A service that works well in one language or context may be difficult to use in another.

Aditi could explore AI-assisted services designed around specific local needs.

Examples might include supporting small businesses with multilingual customer communication or helping service organizations make information easier to understand.

Skills to investigate: Customer research, multilingual service design, usability testing and AI tool evaluation.

Question to test: What important communication difficulties remain unresolved in a specific local market?

Possibility 4 — AI Adoption Experiment Designer

Many organizations are interested in AI but uncertain about where it will produce meaningful benefits.

Instead of offering general AI training, a professional might help organizations design small, measurable adoption experiments.

For example:

Can an AI-assisted process reduce the time required to prepare routine reports without increasing errors?

Can a customer-service team use AI to improve response consistency while maintaining human oversight?

Skills to investigate: Experiment design, operational metrics, project management and process improvement.

Question to test: Would organizations value structured experiments more than generic AI demonstrations?

Possibility 5 — Emerging-Problem Discovery Consultant

Organizations often begin innovation by asking for new solutions.

But what if the more valuable service is helping them discover which problems deserve attention?

Aditi could explore a consulting model that combines customer interviews, PO provocations, AI-assisted analysis and small experiments.

The consultant would not begin with a technology recommendation.

The process would begin with the organization's unresolved difficulties.

Skills to investigate: Research methods, facilitation, lateral thinking, business modeling and validation.

Question to test: Would a client pay for a clearer problem definition before investing in a solution?


6. Five More Possibilities Worth Exploring

The first five possibilities are only starting points.

Aditi could ask AI to explore additional combinations:

AI Evaluation Coordinator: Helping organizations test whether AI systems perform reliably on real tasks.

Human–Agent Operations Planner: Designing responsibilities and oversight when AI agents participate in operational workflows.

AI Accessibility Service Designer: Exploring ways to make digital services more accessible to people with different needs.

Workforce Transition Facilitator: Helping teams identify how changing technology affects tasks, capabilities and learning requirements.

Community AI Opportunity Researcher: Investigating locally important problems that might benefit from appropriate AI-enabled services.

Again, these are conceptual directions. Their economic viability, market demand and appropriate qualifications must be independently established.

A critical distinction

AI can generate plausible descriptions of new opportunities.

It cannot establish that employers are hiring for them or that customers will pay for them merely by describing them confidently.

An AI-generated opportunity is a hypothesis until evidence supports it.


7. Stage 5 — JUDGE: Which Possibilities Deserve Serious Attention?

This is where enthusiasm meets evidence.

Aditi should not abandon a credible job opportunity because an AI-generated career concept sounds exciting.

She needs a disciplined evaluation process.

Consider five criteria.

1. Meaningful demand

Who experiences the problem?

How frequently?

How costly or consequential is it?

What are they doing about it today?

2. Personal fit

Does the opportunity match Aditi's strengths and interests?

Can she acquire the necessary capabilities?

Would she enjoy the daily work?

3. Feasibility

Can she enter the field without unreasonable financial or professional risk?

Are there accessible organizations, customers or projects where she can gain experience?

4. Evidence

Are there real job descriptions, paid projects, customer interviews or documented organizational needs supporting the opportunity?

What remains speculation?

5. Responsible implementation

Does the opportunity involve sensitive information, high-stakes decisions or regulatory obligations?

What expertise and safeguards would be required?

Illustrative evaluation matrix

PossibilityMain attractionKey uncertaintyFirst evidence to collect
Human–AI Workflow DesignerCombines business and AI skillsWill organizations fund redesign work?Interviews with operations managers
AI Decision Accountability SpecialistAddresses governance needsRequired expertise and qualificationsReal role descriptions and practitioner interviews
Local-Language AI Service InnovatorAddresses context-specific needsWill users adopt and pay?Customer interviews and prototype testing
AI Adoption Experiment DesignerProduces measurable business outcomesIs there demand for facilitated pilots?Discussions with small-business owners
Emerging-Problem Discovery ConsultantDifferentiated innovation approachWill clients pay for discovery?One small paid or pilot engagement

The matrix is a framework for investigation, not a ranking based on market research.

Aditi's decision

She decides not to choose a new career immediately.

Instead, she selects two possibilities for further investigation.

She will compare them with her conventional career options using real evidence.

This preserves both creativity and prudence.

JUDGE outcome: Select promising opportunities for testing without confusing novelty with viability.


8. Stage 6 — ACCOMPLISH: The Seven-Day Opportunity Discovery Challenge

The objective is simple:

Discover and test one promising opportunity that you would not have considered through conventional career planning alone.

This exercise is useful for students, professionals considering a transition, educators and aspiring entrepreneurs.

Day 1 — Map Your Conventional Choices

List your five most obvious career or business options.

For each, record why it appeals to you.

Is it compensation?

Prestige?

Security?

Interest?

Family expectations?

A successful role model?

Then identify which assumptions shape your choices.

Day 2 — Apply the PO Escape

Temporarily remove your five familiar options.

Ask:

“If none of these paths existed, what important problems would I want to help solve?”

Do not evaluate the ideas yet.

Use AI to expand your thinking.

Day 3 — Discover Emerging Problems

Investigate problems in three domains that interest you.

Look for credible evidence of changing needs.

Speak with practitioners.

Read relevant industry material.

Observe workflows.

Use AI to organize findings and propose questions, but verify factual claims independently.

Day 4 — Generate Alternative Opportunities

Ask AI to develop ten different professional or entrepreneurial responses to the problems you identified.

Avoid merely renaming familiar jobs.

Explore different delivery models, customers, combinations of skills and forms of value.

Day 5 — Evaluate the Evidence

Shortlist three possibilities.

For each, identify:

  • Who needs it

  • Why it matters

  • What capabilities are required

  • What evidence exists

  • What risks are involved

  • What remains uncertain

Do not confuse AI-generated explanations with market validation.

Day 6 — Test One Possibility

Conduct a small experiment.

Possible experiments include interviewing a potential customer, discussing the concept with a professional, developing a simple demonstration or offering to solve one narrowly defined problem.

The experiment should be inexpensive, ethical and reversible.

Day 7 — Decide What to Learn Next

Review what you discovered.

Did you identify a meaningful problem?

Did someone confirm that the problem matters?

Could you contribute value?

What skills would you need?

What evidence would justify investing more time?

You may decide to pursue the opportunity, investigate further or abandon it.

All three can be useful outcomes.

The real measure of success

The challenge is not to invent a fashionable new job title.

It is to discover an opportunity that is:

Meaningful enough to matter. Plausible enough to investigate. Valuable enough to test.


9. The Complete ChatGPT PO Prompt

Here is the full reusable prompt for students, professionals and entrepreneurs.

Copy this prompt into ChatGPT

Act as my PO lateral-thinking partner, using Edward de Bono's provocation and movement methods.

My challenge is to discover new career, business or entrepreneurial possibilities in the AI era.

Use this provocation:

“PO: I am forbidden to copy any successful career path or business model from the past five years.”

Guide me through the following six stages.

1. FOCUS

Help me identify the conventional paths I am considering and the hidden assumptions behind them.

Explore what success means to me, my existing capabilities, interests, constraints and aspirations.

2. PROVOKE

Apply the escape technique.

Temporarily remove familiar success models and conventional job titles from consideration.

Do not dismiss the provocation merely because it is unrealistic.

3. MOVE

Use principle extraction, positive aspects, consequences, differences and special circumstances to discover useful directions emerging from the provocation.

Help me identify what changes when I begin with emerging problems rather than established career paths.

4. GENERATE

Develop at least ten genuinely different career, professional-service or entrepreneurial possibilities.

Base them on plausible emerging needs, changing technologies, organizational challenges or human problems.

Avoid simply producing a list of fashionable AI jobs.

For each possibility, explain the problem addressed, who might benefit, what capabilities are needed and what makes the direction distinctive.

5. JUDGE

Help me evaluate the most promising possibilities using:

  • Potential demand

  • Personal fit

  • Required capabilities

  • Feasibility

  • Risks

  • Available evidence

  • Uncertainties

Clearly distinguish verified facts from assumptions, speculative ideas and AI-generated hypotheses.

Do not invent job openings, market statistics, customer demand or evidence.

Where current information is necessary, identify what must be researched and verified.

6. ACCOMPLISH

Help me select one promising possibility and design a seven-day, low-cost experiment.

Include:

  • The hypothesis to test

  • People or organizations to approach

  • Questions to ask

  • A small practical activity

  • Evidence to collect

  • Criteria for deciding the next step

Ask me questions at each stage rather than immediately producing a final recommendation.

Begin by asking about my background, skills, interests, ambitions and current career or business options.


10. How to Make This Prompt More Useful

The quality of the exploration improves when you provide real context.

For example:

For an MBA student

“I am completing my MBA in marketing and operations. I enjoy solving customer problems and have experience in retail. Help me discover unconventional opportunities related to AI and changing consumer behavior.”

For an engineering graduate

“I have studied computer science and enjoy building software, but I don't want to assume that conventional software-development roles are my only options. Help me explore emerging problems I could address.”

For an experienced professional

“I have fifteen years of experience in operations management. I want to investigate how my expertise might create value in organizations adopting AI.”

For an entrepreneur

“I operate a small service business. Help me identify new customer problems and business models that might emerge as AI changes expectations and workflows.”

The prompt should adapt to the person's actual situation.

A student with limited resources needs a different experiment from an experienced executive.

An entrepreneur with an existing customer base has different opportunities from someone beginning their career.

The goal is not to discover the same new opportunity for everyone.

It is to help each person discover possibilities relevant to their circumstances.


11. What Should Business Schools Teach in the AI Era?

The provocation raises an interesting educational question.

Should business schools focus primarily on preparing students for existing professional roles?

Or should they also prepare students to discover and create roles that do not yet exist?

These objectives are not mutually exclusive.

Students still need strong foundations in finance, economics, operations, marketing, ethics and organizational behavior.

But they may also benefit from deliberate practice in:

Problem discovery.

Creative reframing.

Lateral thinking.

Human–AI collaboration.

Experiment design.

Evidence-based decision-making.

Responsible innovation.

Interdisciplinary learning.

A possible classroom experiment

Imagine an MBA course in which students must identify a consequential problem that is not adequately addressed by existing products or services.

They then use PO to challenge the assumptions surrounding the problem.

AI helps them explore alternatives.

Students interview relevant stakeholders.

They evaluate the ideas and test a small intervention.

The final assessment is not merely a business plan.

It is a documented learning process showing:

What was assumed?

What was challenged?

What possibilities emerged?

What evidence was gathered?

What worked?

What failed?

What should happen next?

Such an exercise could complement traditional business education.

It would help students practice creating possibilities, not only analyzing established ones.


12. The Bigger Possibility: From Career Seekers to Opportunity Discoverers

Sam Altman's reported comments raise a question about ambition in a period of technological change.

But the deeper issue extends beyond MBA graduates.

It applies to engineers, teachers, consultants, managers, researchers, entrepreneurs and experienced professionals.

Many of us approach the future using categories inherited from the past.

We ask which existing role will remain attractive.

Which successful company should we imitate?

Which familiar skill should we acquire?

Which established strategy should we follow?

These can be sensible questions.

But they are not sufficient.

PO introduces a different possibility.

What if the most valuable opportunity is not yet represented by a familiar job title, product category or business model?

Generative AI can help us explore such possibilities.

But we must guide that exploration deliberately.

Otherwise, AI may simply generate more polished versions of conventional advice.

This is the distinctive opportunity of combining PO with AI.

PO challenges the frame.

AI expands the possibilities.

Human judgment separates promising directions from attractive speculation.

Experimentation reveals what deserves further investment.

That is the thinking philosophy behind AIYING's PO–AI Thinking Lab.


13. Your PO Challenge

For the next seven days, imagine that your preferred career or business path is unavailable.

Not permanently.

Just as a thinking exercise.

Ask yourself:

“If I could not follow an established success story, what new problem would I choose to solve?”

Then use the complete ChatGPT prompt in this article.

Explore the possibilities.

Investigate the evidence.

Test one direction.

You may discover that your original path remains the best choice.

Or you may uncover an opportunity you had never considered.

Either outcome can improve your decision.

A question for readers

Are we preparing young people to succeed in the world we know—or to discover possibilities in the world that is emerging?

What would you advise an Indian MBA graduate entering the AI era?

And what unconventional opportunity would you personally explore?

Share your thoughts and discoveries in the comments.


About PO Prompts

PO Prompts is an AIYING series exploring the power of deliberate provocation and generative AI to discover new possibilities.

Each episode combines a relatable story, a hidden assumption, a PO provocation, structured movement, AI-assisted exploration, critical evaluation, a practical experiment and a complete reusable ChatGPT prompt.

The series draws inspiration from Edward de Bono's original work on lateral thinking, provocation and movement.

The six-stage FOCUS → PROVOKE → MOVE → GENERATE → JUDGE → ACCOMPLISH workflow is an AIYING adaptation for practical human–AI collaboration.

One Image. One Story. One Provocation. Many Possibilities.

PO Prompts — One Strange Question. A New Possibility.

Don't just ask AI which successful path to follow. Use PO to discover a path that may not yet exist.

AIYING — Accomplishing with AI.


References and Further Reading

1. The Times of India (October 29, 2026). Sam Altman on MBA students, established career paths and emerging AI opportunities.

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/technology/tech-news/sam-altman-is-unhappy-with-most-mba-students-that-he-calls-his-chronic-disappointment-says-they-always-want-to-go-do-the-thing-that-/articleshow/135287091.cms

2. Edward de Bono — Serious Creativity. Background on deliberate creative thinking, provocation and movement.

https://www.debono.com/serious-creativity-article

Editorial note: The Indian MBA campus story is fictional. The PO provocation, career possibilities and six-stage AIYING exercise are creative extensions developed for this article, not statements attributed to Sam Altman. Suggested opportunities require independent validation.

PO Prompts #004 — What If Customers Designed the Problems? | Reversing Innovation with AI

What If Customers Designed the Problems?



One Strange Question. A New Possibility.

What if the greatest business innovation begins not with a better solution, but with a completely different way of defining the problem?


The Story: The Product Nobody Wanted

Six months.

That was how long an ambitious Indian startup had spent developing its new AI-powered productivity application.

The company had a talented engineering team, enthusiastic founders and a clear product roadmap.

The application could organize tasks, summarize meetings, generate schedules, prioritize activities and recommend ways to improve productivity.

The team was proud of what it had built.

The interface was elegant. The technology worked. Early demonstrations received encouraging responses.

Then came the launch.

People signed up.

Some explored the application.

A few praised its features.

But something unexpected happened.

Very few customers returned.

The founders were puzzled.

The product worked exactly as designed.

So why weren't people using it?

The meeting that changed everything

The team assembled to discuss the problem.

The product manager suggested adding more features.

The marketing manager proposed a promotional campaign.

The designer recommended simplifying the interface.

The founder wanted a better onboarding experience.

Each suggestion sounded reasonable.

And each was based on the same assumption:

We have built the right solution. We just need to make customers appreciate it.

Then Nisha, a young designer who had joined the company recently, asked a question.

“Why are we trying to improve something customers may not actually need?”

The room fell silent.

She continued.

“What if we stopped deciding what problems customers should have?”

Someone laughed.

“Customers don't design products. We do.”

Nisha smiled.

“Exactly. That's what we assume.”

Then she introduced an unusual proposition:

“What if customers designed the problems, and companies competed to solve them?”

At first, the idea seemed absurd.

Customers were supposed to buy products, not define a company's innovation agenda.

But as the team explored the idea, something began to change.

They stopped discussing features.

They started discussing customers' lives.

What were people struggling with before discovering the application?

What were they already doing to manage their work?

Which frustrations were important enough to motivate a change?

What problems had the company never thought to investigate?

For the first time, the team was not asking how to sell its product.

It was asking whether it had understood the problem.

And that was the beginning of a very different conversation.


1. The Hidden Assumption Behind Product Development

Many organizations follow a familiar sequence:

Identify an opportunity → Define a problem → Design a solution → Build a product → Ask customers for feedback.

There is nothing inherently wrong with this process.

Successful organizations already use customer research, co-design, observation and experimentation to understand real needs.

Yet even customer-focused teams can become attached to their initial interpretation of a problem.

Once a solution takes shape, subsequent discussions often revolve around improving it.

Should we add another feature?

Should we change the pricing?

Should we redesign the interface?

Should we market the product differently?

These questions may be useful.

But they can overlook a more fundamental possibility:

What if we have defined the wrong problem?

Consider the difference between these two questions.

Conventional question:

“How can we make our productivity application more attractive?”

Alternative question:

“What difficulties do people actually experience when trying to accomplish meaningful work?”

The first assumes the application is the appropriate starting point.

The second leaves open the possibility that customers need something entirely different.

Perhaps their biggest difficulty is not task management.

Perhaps it is unclear responsibilities, constant interruptions, unrealistic expectations, conflicting priorities or decisions delayed by other people.

A better task-management application may not address any of those problems.

This is where deliberate lateral thinking becomes valuable.


2. Enter PO: A Provocation That Reverses the Relationship

Edward de Bono developed lateral-thinking methods to help people move beyond established patterns of thought.

One of his important contributions was the use of PO, a signal that introduces a deliberate provocation.

A PO statement is not necessarily a fact, a recommendation or a proposal to be implemented literally.

It is a thinking device.

It temporarily suspends ordinary judgment so that an unusual idea can become a stepping stone toward new possibilities.

For this episode, we use reversal.

Our PO statement

PO: Customers design the problems. Companies compete to solve them.

This reverses a familiar relationship.

Instead of companies defining problems and presenting solutions to customers, imagine customers having the primary role in framing the challenges organizations attempt to solve.

The idea may initially seem impractical.

Customers do not always know the technical possibilities.

They may disagree about what matters.

Their stated preferences may differ from their actual behavior.

And organizations still need expertise, judgment and commercial discipline.

But those objections are not reasons to abandon the provocation immediately.

They are reasons to explore it carefully.

The purpose of PO is not to prove that customers should literally control every aspect of product development.

The purpose is to discover what becomes possible when we reverse our usual way of thinking.


3. PO–AI Thinking Lab: From Provocation to Practical Innovation

Beginning with Episode #004, PO Prompts follows a refined six-stage Thinking Lab.

The approach draws on Edward de Bono's provocation and movement concepts, then extends the exploration using generative AI, critical evaluation and practical experimentation.

The six stages are:

FOCUS → PROVOKE → MOVE → GENERATE → JUDGE → ACCOMPLISH

Let's apply each stage to our startup.

Stage 1 — FOCUS: Identify the Real Problem

The startup initially described its problem as:

“Our productivity application is not retaining enough customers.”

That is a business symptom.

It does not yet explain why customers leave.

The team assumes that improving the application will improve retention.

But what if the product itself is not addressing a sufficiently important customer need?

Questions worth asking

  • What problem did we believe customers had?

  • What evidence supported that belief?

  • How did customers actually describe their difficulties?

  • What were they doing before our product existed?

  • Which assumptions did we make without testing?

  • Are we improving a solution before validating the problem?

The team discovers several untested assumptions:

Assumption 1: People want another productivity application.

Assumption 2: More features will make the application more valuable.

Assumption 3: Customers understand and describe their needs in the same language as product developers.

Assumption 4: Low retention primarily reflects problems with the product interface or marketing.

Assumption 5: The company should define the problem before involving customers.

These assumptions may or may not be true.

The point is to make them visible.

The first breakthrough

The team's challenge changes from:

“How do we improve our application?”

to:

“What problem are customers actually trying to solve, and how do we know?”

This shift creates room for the provocation.


Stage 2 — PROVOKE: Reverse the Conventional Relationship

Now introduce the PO statement:

PO: Customers design the problems. Companies compete to solve them.

Imagine a world in which companies cannot begin by proposing products.

Instead, customers publish descriptions of difficulties they experience.

Organizations study those difficulties and compete to demonstrate which solutions produce the best outcomes.

A customer might say:

“I lose two hours every day because I don't know which tasks genuinely matter.”

Another might say:

“My work is interrupted by constant requests from colleagues.”

A third might say:

“I have too many tools, and none of them helps me make difficult decisions.”

These statements describe different problems.

Yet the startup's original application might have treated all three as variations of task management.

The reversal forces the company to reconsider its starting point.

Why reversal matters

Reversal interrupts a familiar direction of thinking.

Instead of asking customers to react to a predefined solution, we imagine customers setting the problem agenda.

This does not mean that every customer statement should be accepted literally.

Customers may describe symptoms rather than underlying causes.

Organizations still need to investigate, interpret and validate what they hear.

But the reversal exposes an important principle:

Problem discovery deserves as much creativity as solution development.


Stage 3 — MOVE: Turn the Provocation into New Directions

This is a crucial part of deliberate lateral thinking.

A provocative idea should not remain merely strange or entertaining.

We must move from it toward potentially useful concepts.

De Bono's movement approaches include extracting principles, examining positive aspects, considering consequences, noticing differences and identifying circumstances where an idea might have value.

Let's use several of these approaches.

Movement A — Extract a principle

From the provocation, we can extract this principle:

The people experiencing a problem should have a meaningful role in defining what needs to change.

That principle does not require customers to become professional designers.

It suggests that organizations should create better ways to discover and interpret lived experiences.

A possible direction emerges:

Build the problem-discovery process before building the product roadmap.

Movement B — Examine positive aspects

What might be valuable about customers defining problems?

Organizations could discover frustrations they had not anticipated.

Teams could avoid building features that address weak or imaginary needs.

Customers could feel that their experiences are taken seriously.

Innovation might shift from adding functionality toward improving real outcomes.

These are hypotheses, not guaranteed benefits.

But they point toward experiments worth conducting.

Movement C — Explore consequences

Imagine the startup genuinely adopting this reversal.

What would happen next?

Its product team might spend less time debating features internally.

Its customer interviews might focus more on experiences and workarounds.

Its roadmap might become organized around verified customer difficulties rather than proposed features.

Its success measures might shift from the number of features delivered toward improvements in customers' actual work.

The team might even discover that the most valuable solution is not another application.

It could be a service, a workflow change, an integration or a simpler way of coordinating people.

Movement D — Find special circumstances

Where might customer-defined problems be particularly valuable?

Consider:

  • Healthcare services, where patient experiences can reveal practical difficulties that standard processes overlook.

  • Education, where students may identify barriers that curriculum designers underestimate.

  • Public services, where citizens encounter frustrations that internal administrative metrics fail to capture.

  • Small businesses, where owners may struggle with problems poorly represented by existing software.

  • Enterprise technology, where everyday users experience workflow obstacles that senior decision-makers rarely see.

These are areas for exploration, not proof that the approach will always succeed.

The movement insight

We began with an unusual statement:

“Customers design the problems.”

We have moved toward a more practical idea:

Organizations can innovate by giving customers a stronger role in revealing, framing and validating problems before solutions are developed.

That is a meaningful direction for further investigation.


Stage 4 — GENERATE: Use AI to Expand the Possibilities

Now generative AI becomes a thinking partner.

Instead of asking AI for the best product features, we ask it to expand the directions revealed by PO.

Here are five possibilities.

Possibility 1 — A Customer Problem Library

Imagine an organization maintaining a structured collection of customer-described difficulties.

Instead of recording only feature requests, it captures:

  • What the customer was trying to accomplish

  • What went wrong

  • What workaround they used

  • What consequences followed

  • What outcome they hoped to achieve

AI could help organize these descriptions into themes.

The organization could then investigate which problems recur, which are most consequential and which are poorly addressed.

Potential value: A stronger connection between product decisions and actual customer experiences.

Important caution: AI-generated clusters are interpretations. They require human review and validation against the underlying evidence.

Possibility 2 — A Problem-First Innovation Marketplace

Imagine customers and communities publishing challenges rather than shopping for predefined solutions.

Organizations, researchers and independent innovators could propose competing approaches.

A challenge might be:

“How can small retailers reduce the time spent reconciling daily transactions?”

Different providers might propose software, process changes, training or automated integrations.

Solutions would be judged against agreed outcomes.

Potential value: Competition shifts toward solving meaningful problems rather than showcasing impressive features.

Possibility 3 — AI-Assisted Discovery of Hidden Frustrations

Customers may not always express their needs as clear problem statements.

They might say:

“This takes too long.”

“I keep forgetting.”

“I don't trust the result.”

“I have to ask three people before anything happens.”

AI could help researchers organize interviews, compare descriptions and generate hypotheses about underlying difficulties.

For example, repeated complaints about forgetting tasks might point toward unclear priorities, excessive workload or fragmented communication.

Potential value: More systematic exploration of what customers mean, not merely what they say.

Important caution: AI cannot reliably determine an unspoken need from a few comments. Every hypothesis must be tested with real users.

Possibility 4 — Customer-Defined Success Measures

Companies often evaluate products using internal metrics such as feature adoption, session duration or engagement.

What if customers helped define what successful outcomes look like?

A customer might care about:

  • Completing essential work before leaving the office

  • Making fewer avoidable mistakes

  • Reducing unnecessary interruptions

  • Spending less time coordinating routine activities

  • Feeling more confident about important decisions

AI could help translate these outcome descriptions into candidate measures.

Potential value: Product success becomes more closely connected to meaningful customer results.

Possibility 5 — Products That Evolve Around Changing Problems

Imagine a product that regularly asks users:

“What has become more difficult for you since we last spoke?”

AI could help organize responses, identify emerging patterns and suggest new questions for researchers.

The organization could investigate whether changing customer circumstances require different services, workflows or features.

Potential value: Continuous problem discovery rather than occasional feature-request collection.

Important caution: Customers must understand what information is collected, how it is used and what choices they have. Privacy and consent are essential.


Stage 5 — JUDGE: Which Possibilities Are Worth Pursuing?

Creative thinking should expand possibilities before narrowing them.

But eventually, judgment is necessary.

Not every unusual idea deserves implementation.

Not every AI-generated suggestion reflects a genuine customer need.

And not every customer request represents a commercially viable opportunity.

Let's evaluate our five possibilities.

PossibilityPotential valueMain challengeFirst validation step
Customer Problem LibraryBetter visibility into recurring needsIncomplete or biased feedbackReview a small sample of actual customer experiences
Problem-First MarketplaceDiverse competing solutionsAttracting participants and defining successTest one challenge with a small group
AI-Assisted Frustration DiscoveryFaster organization of qualitative researchMisinterpretation and hallucinationCompare AI themes with original interviews
Customer-Defined Success MeasuresMore meaningful outcomesSelecting reliable measuresAsk customers to rank desired outcomes
Products That Evolve Around ProblemsEarlier discovery of changing needsPrivacy and feedback fatiguePilot periodic opt-in feedback

These are qualitative judgments for exploration, not evidence-based rankings.

Questions for responsible evaluation

Before selecting a possibility, ask:

Usefulness: Does this address a meaningful customer problem?

Feasibility: Can we test it with available time and resources?

Evidence: What observations support the underlying assumptions?

Risk: Could the approach create privacy, fairness, accessibility or trust problems?

Measurement: What would demonstrate that the approach works?

Alternatives: Is there a simpler or more effective way to achieve the same outcome?

For our startup, the Customer Problem Library may be a sensible starting point.

It is relatively easy to pilot and does not require building a new platform.

The team can begin with real conversations.


Stage 6 — ACCOMPLISH: A Seven-Day Practical Experiment

Let's turn the idea into an experiment.

Experiment: Stop selling the solution. Discover the problem.

Objective: Determine whether direct customer problem discovery reveals important needs that the startup's current product roadmap overlooks.

Duration: Seven days.

Participants: Five to ten customers or prospective customers, selected to represent different relevant usage experiences.

Day 1 — Define the learning goal

Write down the problem the company believes it solves.

For example:

“Busy professionals struggle to manage their daily tasks.”

List the evidence supporting that statement.

Identify what remains uncertain.

Days 2–3 — Interview customers without pitching the product

Ask open-ended questions:

  1. Tell me about a recent workday that felt unnecessarily difficult.

  2. What were you trying to accomplish?

  3. What got in your way?

  4. What did you do to work around the difficulty?

  5. How often does this happen?

  6. What happens when the problem remains unresolved?

  7. Have you tried anything to improve the situation?

  8. What would a meaningful improvement look like?

Avoid leading questions such as:

“Would you like an AI app that organizes your tasks?”

That question introduces a solution before understanding the problem.

Day 4 — Organize the evidence with AI

With appropriate consent and privacy safeguards, provide anonymized interview notes to ChatGPT.

Ask it to distinguish:

  • Direct customer observations

  • Reported frustrations

  • Existing workarounds

  • Desired outcomes

  • Possible underlying causes

  • Unverified hypotheses

Require it to link each theme back to the relevant evidence.

Do not ask AI to invent customer needs.

Day 5 — Compare discoveries with the existing roadmap

Which problems were already known?

Which were underestimated?

Which are not addressed by the current product?

Which assumptions appear unsupported?

Select one surprising problem for further investigation.

Day 6 — Design a small solution experiment

Do not immediately build a major new feature.

Try a lightweight intervention.

For example, if customers struggle with unclear priorities, test a simple daily priority-setting workflow with a few participants.

It might involve a checklist, a short guided conversation or a manual service.

Day 7 — Evaluate and learn

Compare the experimental approach with customers' existing methods.

Ask:

  • Did participants experience an improvement?

  • Was the problem important enough for them to change behavior?

  • What evidence supports the result?

  • What remains uncertain?

  • Should the team continue, revise or abandon the idea?

What counts as success?

The experiment succeeds as a learning exercise if it produces a clearer, evidence-supported understanding of an important customer problem.

It does not need to produce a new product immediately.

Sometimes the most valuable accomplishment is discovering that you should not build what you originally planned.


4. The Complete ChatGPT PO Prompt

The following prompt turns this episode into a reusable AI-assisted thinking exercise.

You can apply it to a product, service, customer experience, educational program, organizational process or business model.

Copy and use this prompt

Act as my PO lateral-thinking partner, drawing on Edward de Bono's provocation and movement methods.

My situation: I am developing or improving a product, service, process or experience.

Use this provocation:

“PO: Customers design the problems. Organizations compete to solve them.”

Guide me through six stages:

1. FOCUS: Identify the conventional problem definition and hidden assumptions about who defines customer needs.

2. PROVOKE: Explore the reversal seriously without immediately dismissing it as impractical.

3. MOVE: Use principle extraction, consequences and positive aspects to discover new directions.

4. GENERATE: Develop at least five genuinely different possibilities for discovering and responding to customer-defined problems.

5. JUDGE: Evaluate each possibility for usefulness, feasibility, risks and evidence needed. Clearly separate assumptions from verified customer insights.

6. ACCOMPLISH: Help me design one small, low-cost experiment with a clear success measure.

Ask me questions at each stage. Do not jump straight to solutions.

Do not invent customer evidence, research findings or validation results.

Begin by asking:

“What product, service or customer experience would you like to rethink?”

How to use it effectively

Begin with a real challenge.

For example:

“Our training program has low completion rates.”

“Our customers rarely use our mobile application.”

“Our students are not engaging with online lessons.”

“Our consulting clients often request major changes after reviewing proposals.”

Then allow AI to guide you through the six stages.

At each stage, contribute your own knowledge, experiences and evidence.

Treat AI-generated ideas as possibilities for investigation, not as established facts.

The objective is not to produce a longer list of solutions.

It is to discover a different and potentially more useful way of understanding the problem.


5. Beyond Startups: Where Else Could This PO Prompt Be Useful?

The same provocation can open possibilities in several domains.

Education

Conventional approach: Teachers design learning activities and students complete them.

PO reversal: Students identify the learning difficulties; educators design ways to address them.

This could inspire student-led problem discovery, personalized support and new approaches to curriculum improvement.

Healthcare

Conventional approach: Healthcare organizations design services around clinical and operational requirements.

PO reversal: Patients describe the difficulties of navigating care; organizations investigate how to improve the experience.

This might reveal opportunities in communication, scheduling, accessibility and care coordination.

Clinical safety and professional expertise remain essential.

Government and Public Services

Conventional approach: Agencies define services and citizens navigate them.

PO reversal: Citizens identify recurring service difficulties; agencies redesign processes around validated needs.

This might reveal problems that administrative performance indicators do not fully capture.

Consulting

Conventional approach: Consultants receive a client's stated problem and propose a solution.

PO reversal: Clients and affected stakeholders collaboratively redefine the problem before recommendations are developed.

This could reduce the risk of producing sophisticated solutions to poorly understood challenges.

AI Product Development

Conventional approach: Developers build AI capabilities and search for applications.

PO reversal: Users identify consequential problems; developers determine whether AI is appropriate.

Sometimes the best solution will involve AI.

Sometimes it will involve a simpler process, clearer responsibilities or better information.

The problem should guide the technology—not the other way around.


6. Why PO and Generative AI Work Well Together

Generative AI has an extraordinary capacity to produce ideas, variations, scenarios and alternative formulations.

But generating more ideas is not necessarily the same as thinking differently.

If we ask AI to improve an existing product, it may produce numerous plausible improvements while accepting the product's underlying assumptions.

PO introduces a deliberate disruption.

It changes the direction of exploration.

AI can then help develop the implications of that disruption.

Human judgment determines which possibilities are worth investigating.

Experimentation provides evidence about what actually works.

The PO–AI partnership

PO provokes.

It challenges assumptions and disrupts established thinking patterns.

AI generates.

It helps explore alternatives, connect concepts and develop hypothetical possibilities.

Humans judge.

They bring context, values, responsibility and critical evaluation.

Together, they accomplish.

They turn promising ideas into experiments, decisions and practical improvements.

This is the philosophy behind the AIYING adaptation of PO thinking.

It is not a replacement for Edward de Bono's original methods.

It is an attempt to apply deliberate creative thinking in an age of generative AI.


7. The Bigger Insight: Who Owns the Problem?

Organizations often compete through the quality of their solutions.

Better technology.

More features.

Lower prices.

Faster delivery.

Improved customer experience.

All of these can matter.

But what if a deeper competitive advantage comes from understanding problems that others have overlooked?

Consider two organizations.

Organization A asks:

“How can we make our solution better?”

Organization B asks:

“What important problem are we failing to understand?”

Organization A may improve an existing offering.

Organization B may discover an entirely new opportunity.

Neither question is universally superior.

But when an organization becomes too attached to its existing solution, the second question may be especially valuable.

The PO reversal helps make that question visible.

Innovation does not always begin with a brilliant answer.

Sometimes it begins by giving someone else the opportunity to redefine the question.


8. Your PO Challenge

Think about something you are currently trying to improve.

It could be a product, service, course, business process, family routine or community initiative.

Ask yourself:

Who currently defines the problem?

Then introduce the provocation:

PO: The people affected by the problem become its designers.

What changes?

What hidden assumptions become visible?

What possibilities emerge?

What could you test this week?

Try the complete ChatGPT prompt above and share the most surprising direction you discover.

A question for readers

If your customers, students, employees or users could redefine the problem you are trying to solve, what might they tell you that you have never considered?

I'd be interested in hearing your examples.


About PO Prompts

PO Prompts is an AIYING series exploring how deliberate provocations can help us discover new possibilities with generative AI.

Each episode combines:

  • One relatable story

  • One hidden assumption

  • One deliberate PO provocation

  • Structured movement toward new possibilities

  • AI-assisted exploration

  • Human judgment and evaluation

  • One practical experiment

  • One complete, reusable ChatGPT prompt

The series draws inspiration from Edward de Bono's work on lateral thinking, provocation and movement.

The six-stage PO–AI Thinking Lab is an AIYING adaptation that combines these ideas with generative AI and practical experimentation.

One Image. One Story. One Provocation. Many Possibilities.

PO Prompts — One Strange Question. A New Possibility.

AIYING — Accomplishing with AI.


Further Reading

Edward de Bono, Serious Creativity — an introduction to deliberate creativity, provocation and movement.

https://www.debono.com/serious-creativity-article

The startup story and characters in this article are fictional and used to illustrate the thinking method. The suggested applications and experiments are exploratory, not reported research findings.

PO Prompts #003 — What If AI Were Forbidden to Give Answers? | From Answers to Possibilities

What If AI Were Forbidden to Give Answers?



What if the greatest potential of Generative AI is not generating answers, but generating possibilities?

We are living in an extraordinary age.

Ask AI to write an email, and it produces one. Ask it to summarize a report, and it responds in seconds. Ask it to recommend a strategy, and it offers a structured plan.

The better AI becomes at answering, the more we rely on it.

But consider a strange possibility:

What if AI were forbidden to give answers?

Would it become useless?

Or would we discover an entirely different kind of intelligence partnership?

Welcome to PO Prompts #003, where we use Edward de Bono's provocative thinking approach to explore what AI could become when we stop treating it merely as an answer machine.


1. The Story: The Professional Who Had All the Answers

Arjun is a young professional working in a technology company.

His day begins with AI.

He uses it to draft emails, summarize meetings, prepare presentations, analyze documents and recommend solutions.

His productivity has improved dramatically.

One afternoon, during a strategy meeting, his manager asks a simple question:

“What possibilities have we not considered?”

Arjun opens his AI assistant.

Within seconds, he receives ten recommendations.

They are sensible, well-structured and professionally presented.

But something bothers him.

Most of the suggestions are variations of ideas the team has already discussed.

The manager asks another question:

“What if our entire approach to this problem is wrong?”

Arjun hesitates.

For the first time, he realizes that having more answers does not necessarily mean discovering more possibilities.

Perhaps he has been asking AI the wrong kind of questions.


2. The Hidden Assumption

Most interactions with AI follow a familiar pattern:

Human asks → AI answers → Human acts.

Behind this pattern lies an assumption:

The primary value of AI is its ability to provide useful answers.

This assumption is understandable. Answer generation is one of AI's most visible capabilities.

But it is not the only way AI can contribute to thinking.

AI can also help us explore alternatives, construct hypothetical scenarios, examine assumptions and develop ideas that would otherwise remain unexplored.

What happens when we deliberately remove the expectation of an immediate answer?


3. Enter PO: What If AI Were Forbidden to Give Answers?

Edward de Bono introduced PO as a tool for provocative thinking.

Unlike an ordinary question, a PO statement can deliberately introduce an unreasonable or impossible condition to disrupt habitual thinking.

The purpose is not to prove the statement correct.

It is to use the provocation as a stepping stone toward new ideas.

Our provocation is:

PO: AI is forbidden to give answers.

Imagine that tomorrow, every AI assistant receives a new instruction:

You may not provide direct answers or recommendations.

Instead, AI must help users explore what they have not yet considered.

What could such an AI do?

It might challenge assumptions rather than accept them.

It might ask questions that expose overlooked possibilities.

It might introduce deliberately unusual perspectives.

It might help people imagine alternative futures.

And it might turn surprising ideas into experiments.

The apparent restriction could reveal an entirely different source of value.

AI becomes a possibility engine rather than only an answer engine.


4. PO Thinking Lab — From Answers to Possibilities

This is where the reader becomes an active participant.

The goal is not merely to appreciate the provocation. It is to use it.

Step 1 — Recognize the conventional thinking

Consider a problem you are currently facing.

Perhaps you are planning a project, making a career decision, improving a business process or designing a new product.

Your usual AI prompt might be:

“What is the best solution to this problem?”

Notice what this question assumes.

It assumes that the problem is already correctly defined and that the next step is to identify a solution.

But what if the problem itself needs to be questioned?

Step 2 — Challenge the assumption

Ask yourself:

  • What am I taking for granted?

  • Why do I believe this is the problem?

  • Which alternatives have I already excluded?

  • What would someone from an entirely different field notice?

The objective is not to reject established knowledge. It is to expose assumptions that may be unnecessarily limiting our thinking.

Step 3 — Introduce the PO provocation

Now impose the unusual rule:

PO: AI cannot give me an answer.

It can only help me discover possibilities.

Instead of asking, “What should I do?”, ask:

“What possibilities am I failing to see?”

This changes the direction of the conversation.

Step 4 — Move through five possibilities

Consider five potential roles for an answer-free AI.

Possibility A — The Assumption Challenger

AI identifies assumptions embedded in the user's problem and explores what might happen if they were removed.

Possibility B — The Question Inventor

Instead of producing solutions, AI generates unfamiliar, provocative questions that open new directions.

Possibility C — The Alternative-Future Explorer

AI helps users imagine different scenarios, including ones that seem improbable today.

Possibility D — The Perspective Shifter

AI examines a problem from the viewpoints of customers, competitors, beginners, future generations or entirely different professions.

Possibility E — The Experiment Designer

AI helps transform unconventional possibilities into small, testable experiments without prematurely claiming that an idea will work.

These are not predictions about what every AI system should become.

They are possibilities revealed by the provocation.

Step 5 — Discover the movement

We began with a seemingly absurd restriction:

AI is forbidden to give answers.

But the restriction reveals an important distinction.

Answer generation helps us work within a problem frame.

Possibility exploration helps us reconsider the frame itself.

Both are valuable.

The breakthrough is recognizing when each is needed.

Step 6 — Run a real experiment

Choose one decision you are facing this week.

For your first AI conversation about it, prohibit immediate recommendations.

Ask AI to identify assumptions, generate five distinct ways of framing the issue and explore their implications.

Then select one surprising but plausible direction.

Only after this exploration should you ask AI to help evaluate and implement it.

Compare the experience with your usual answer-seeking approach.

Did you discover a possibility you would otherwise have missed?


5. The Complete ChatGPT PO Prompt

Copy this prompt into ChatGPT and try it with a real problem.

Act as my PO lateral-thinking partner, inspired by Edward de Bono's concept of provocation.

For this conversation, do not begin by giving me answers or recommendations.

Instead:

  1. Help me identify the hidden assumptions behind my problem.

  2. Introduce one deliberately provocative PO statement that challenges those assumptions.

  3. Explore at least five distinct possibilities that emerge from the provocation.

  4. Help me move from unusual ideas toward potentially useful concepts.

  5. Challenge me with questions that expand my thinking.

  6. Help me select one possibility for a small, practical experiment.

Distinguish speculative possibilities from established facts. Do not evaluate ideas too early.

Begin by asking: “What problem, decision, or opportunity would you like to explore differently?”

The purpose of this prompt is not to eliminate answers forever.

It is to create space for exploration before committing to an answer.


6. PO and Generative AI: A Powerful Partnership

Generative AI can produce many ideas, scenarios and variations.

But generating more content does not automatically produce genuinely new thinking.

If our prompts remain trapped within familiar assumptions, AI may simply generate more sophisticated variations of familiar solutions.

This is where PO becomes especially relevant.

PO disrupts the direction of thinking.

AI expands the possibilities that emerge.

Human judgment evaluates their usefulness.

Experimentation turns promising possibilities into accomplishments.

We can express this partnership as:

PROVOKE → GENERATE → MOVE → ACCOMPLISH

This is not a claim that every provocative idea is valuable or that AI-generated possibilities are automatically correct.

It is a practical approach for combining creative exploration with responsible judgment.

And it connects directly to the philosophy of AIYING — Accomplishing with AI.


7. The Bigger Insight

We often ask:

How can AI help me do this better?

PO invites a different question:

What if I should be doing something entirely different?

That is a fundamental shift.

The first question improves an existing direction.

The second opens the possibility of discovering a new one.

The most valuable AI conversations may involve both.

First, expand what is possible.

Then, determine what is useful, responsible and achievable.


8. Your PO Challenge

For your next important decision, try this:

Spend five minutes with AI without asking for a single solution.

Ask only for assumptions, provocations, alternative perspectives and unexplored possibilities.

Then reflect:

Did AI give you something more valuable than an answer — a new direction?

Share the most surprising possibility you discovered.


PO Prompts — One Strange Question. A New Possibility.

One Image. One Story. One Provocation. Many Possibilities.

AIYING — Accomplishing with AI.

PO Prompts #002 — What If Meetings Were Forbidden? | Rethinking Workplace Collaboration

What If Meetings Were Forbidden?





One Strange Question. A New Possibility.

AIYING — Accomplishing with AI

Six Meetings. One Working Day. Almost No Progress.

Monday, 9:00 AM.

Ananya, a project manager, joins her first meeting.

The team discusses progress, reviews pending tasks and identifies issues requiring attention.

At 11:00 AM, she joins another meeting to report the same progress to senior management.

At 2:00 PM, everyone gathers to prepare for tomorrow's project review.

By 5:30 PM, Ananya has attended six meetings.

Her calendar is full.

Her project work is still waiting.

She wonders:

“How can I manage my meetings more efficiently?”

Then comes a surprising proposition.

PO: What if nobody were allowed to attend meetings?

Ridiculous?

Perhaps.

But that is precisely where lateral thinking begins.


The PO Thinking Lab

Step 1 — Recognize the Problem

Ananya initially believes she has a time-management problem.

She considers shorter meetings, better agendas and stricter time limits.

These might help.

But they all assume something important:

The meetings themselves are necessary.

What if that assumption deserves examination?

Step 2 — Expose the Hidden Assumption

We often associate meetings with collaboration.

We assume that to share information, coordinate work or make decisions, people must gather at the same time.

But are all these activities fundamentally the same?

Consider four common reasons for meetings:

  • Sharing information

  • Making decisions

  • Solving problems

  • Building relationships

Each serves a different purpose.

Yet organizations frequently use the same mechanism—a meeting—for all four.

The hidden assumption: Collaboration requires meetings.

Step 3 — Introduce the PO Provocation

Edward de Bono introduced PO as a tool for provocative thinking.

Instead of immediately judging whether an idea is right or wrong, we temporarily use it to explore possibilities.

Our provocation is:

PO: Attending meetings is forbidden.

This is not a recommendation to eliminate all meetings.

It is an intentionally unreasonable proposition designed to disrupt habitual thinking.

For a moment, imagine that Ananya's organization cannot hold meetings.

What would happen?

Step 4 — Move From the Impossible to New Possibilities

This is the most important stage.

We do not reject the provocation.

We explore its consequences.

Possibility A — Information without meetings

If people cannot gather to report progress, they must find another way to make progress visible.

Perhaps a shared project dashboard could show completed work, blockers, decisions and next steps.

The emerging principle:

Information should be available when needed, not only when a meeting takes place.

Possibility B — Decisions without unnecessary attendance

If meetings are unavailable, decisions cannot depend on gathering everyone.

Perhaps each decision could have a clearly identified owner, required inputs and a deadline.

The emerging principle:

Decision-making needs clarity of authority, not necessarily a room full of people.

Possibility C — Problems that demand real collaboration

Some problems involve uncertainty, competing perspectives or complex trade-offs.

Without routine meetings, these situations become more visible.

People might discover that certain conversations are genuinely valuable and deserve focused attention.

The emerging principle:

Meet when interaction creates value that other methods cannot provide.

Possibility D — Collaboration without constant interruption

If routine meetings disappear, professionals gain longer periods for focused work.

But they also need reliable ways to ask questions, raise concerns and coordinate dependencies.

The emerging principle:

Collaboration should support productive work, not continually interrupt it.

Step 5 — Discover the Aha Moment

Ananya realizes something important.

Her original question was:

“How can I manage my meetings more efficiently?”

Now she asks:

“Which outcomes actually require a meeting?”

That is the thinking shift.

The discovery is not that meetings are bad.

It is that meetings are one possible mechanism for collaboration—not collaboration itself.

The goal is to design the most appropriate way to achieve each outcome.


Step 6 — Accomplish: The One-Week PO Experiment

Choose one recurring status meeting.

For one week, replace it with a simple written update containing:

  1. Progress since the last update

  2. Current blockers

  3. Decisions required

  4. Responsible owners and deadlines

Allow team members to request a focused discussion when a problem genuinely requires interaction.

At the end of the week, evaluate:

  • Was information equally or more accessible?

  • Were decisions made on time?

  • Did team members gain useful focus time?

  • Did any communication problems emerge?

  • Should the original meeting return, change or disappear?

The purpose is not to prove that meetings are unnecessary. It is to discover which forms of collaboration work best.


Try the PO Thinking Lab With AI

AI can help us explore provocative ideas without replacing human judgment.

Copy this prompt into ChatGPT:

PO Thinking Partner Prompt

"Act as PO, my lateral-thinking companion, using Edward de Bono's approach.

I want to challenge the assumption that effective collaboration requires meetings.

Start with this provocation: 'Attending meetings is forbidden.'

Do not immediately offer conventional productivity advice.

First, help me identify the assumptions behind our existing meeting practices.

Next, guide me through the consequences of the provocation. Ask what would happen to information sharing, decision-making, problem-solving and relationships.

Help me extract useful principles from those consequences.

Then generate at least three alternative ways of collaborating.

Finally, help me design a realistic one-week experiment with measurable outcomes.

Ask questions throughout so I can make the discoveries and decisions myself."


Your PO Challenge

Imagine your organization announces:

“For the next seven days, nobody may attend a meeting.”

What would stop working?

What might work better?

And what entirely new way of collaborating might emerge?

Don't immediately search for the correct answer.

Explore the possibilities.

Share your most surprising discovery in the comments.


About PO Prompts

PO Prompts is a series exploring how surprising provocations, human stories and deliberate lateral thinking can reveal possibilities that conventional problem-solving may overlook.

Inspired by Edward de Bono's PO approach, each episode begins with a familiar challenge and invites readers to think beyond established assumptions.

AI serves as a thinking partner—helping us question, explore, experiment and learn.

PO Prompts
One Strange Question. A New Possibility.

AIYING — Accomplishing with AI.

Accomplish with AI

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