Keep an open mind. Keep ask­ing why, and be open to change. Get a fresh set of eyes as often as you need them. Fail­ing to do these means fail­ing to solve the prob­lems we face (large or small) and fail­ing to reach our poten­tial. The con­se­quences may range from dis­as­trous to astounding.

Seth Godin notes that Starbuck’s didn’t sell Espresso, hot cof­fee, Bis­cotti, Frap­pu­cino, or in fact most of what else on their menu when they started out… they worked their way up to 5 stores and 20 employ­ees sell­ing beans. I won­der how far out­side Seat­tle they’d have made it on that strat­egy? There’s a lot to be said for flex­i­bil­ity, for being will­ing to change and adapt. It takes think­ing dif­fer­ently.

A few years ago a young Cana­dian, Eva Vertes, dis­cov­ered a com­pound that inhibits brain cell death. It was regarded as a step toward cur­ing Alzheimer’s, and won her “Best in Med­i­cine” at the Inter­na­tional Sci­ence Fair — she was 17 at the time. Dubbed a micro­bi­ol­ogy prodigy, she’s now aim­ing to find bet­ter ways to treat — and avoid — can­cer. She basi­cally keeps ask­ing “why” to ques­tions to which oth­ers may have assumed the answers for years. When she asks some of these ques­tions, her think­ing is seen as rad­i­cal. “If smok­ing can cause lung can­cer, and drink­ing can cause liver can­cer, is it pos­si­ble that can­cer is a direct result of injury? If so, could can­cer be caused by the body’s own repair sys­tem going awry?” She says, “It’s almost as if the body has orig­i­nated this inge­nious response, but can’t quite con­trol it. It hasn’t quite become fine-tuned enough to fin­ish what has been initiated.”

Eva Vertes made the conference-closing pre­sen­ta­tion at TED 2005 (you can view her pre­sen­ta­tion online, and it’ll blow you away). Some­thing tells me she’s one of our bright­est hopes in the fight against can­cer. In her pre­sen­ta­tion, she says, “I read that can­cer in skele­tal mus­cle is extremely rare… but it was left at that, no-one seemed to be ask­ing why. So—I decided to ask why.” The responses were that it just didn’t seem a good tar­get for can­cer. Again she says, “So I decided to ask why.” And she’s decided to keep ask­ing until she gets an answer. Her hypoth­e­sis, and her research sug­gests that there is can­cer in these cells, but that it doesn’t metas­ti­cize… because in those cells, the body is able to con­trol it. “Her approach marks an impor­tant shift in sci­en­tific think­ing, look­ing in brand-new places for cancer’s cause — and its cure. Her ulti­mate goal, which even she calls far-fetched, is to fight can­cer with cancer.”

Don’t assume you know the answer, and don’t be afraid to chal­lenge old assump­tions. Buck the trend, get your own answer. Think dif­fer­ently. Who knows what you’ll accomplish?