# Daily Inspiration: “Every industry-changing breakthrough begins with a simple question: Why do we still do it this way?”
By 

## Article Content
"Every industry-changing breakthrough begins with a simple question: Why do we still do it this way?" - Futurist Jim Carroll Of all the phrases I've come to hate over the years, it's this one: "But we've always done it this way!" So what! I won't bother repeating that phrase often wrongly attributed to Einstein. The point is this - you are guaranteed to fail if you keep doing the same thing in the face of constantly changing circumstances. You are bound to become irrelevant if your routine never changes when everything else does. It's a certainty you will fall behind if your product never changes but your customers and industry do. Need I go on? The simplest way to get ahead is to ask yourself this simple question: "What if we stop doing it the way we've always done it?" That frees you up to explore new ideas, opens you up to new ways of thinking, and cracks open wide the door to bold and fresh concepts. The folks at Blackberry/RIM saw a device with a keyboard, and presumed they would always build the same thing. Steve Jobs saw the iPhone, which transformed a mobile phone with a keyboard into a pocket-sized computer, rendering the Blackberry obsolete overnight. Behind that was the simple premise: "what if we stop thinking the same way about mobile devices?" And that type of thinking is the thinking that leads to big, bold breakthroughs. Always start out by having the courage to ask, "why do we still do it this way?"  

---
Source: https://jimcarroll.com/2026/06/daily-inspiration-every-industry-changing-breakthrough-begins-with-a-simple-question-why-do-we-still-do-it-this-way/