By Fernanda Arreola and Gregory C. Unruh
CERN’s three fundamental questions inspire innovation by fostering principles thinking, system cycles, and strategic foresight, enabling entrepreneurs to navigate uncertainty and create transformative, long-term solutions.
What can the biggest questions of science teach entrepreneurs and innovators?
In an era where startups and innovators move fast and iterate quickly to deliver immediate results, it is easy to forget that some of the most transformative innovations emerge from patiently asking the right questions. Before products are designed or markets are created, breakthrough innovation begins with curiosity, often about first principles. This is the domain of fundamental science, and few institutions embody it more powerfully than CERN.
Many of us carry lists of experiences we hope to live at least once in our lives. These “bucket lists” are attainable yet aspirational goals that require deliberate action. For the authors of this article, one of these goals was to visit and discover CERN in the autumn of 2025.
CERN was founded in 1954 as a collective venture emerging from a Europe eager to rebuild its cities and its intellectual horizons. In the aftermath of a fractured time, scientists and political leaders envisioned a center where curiosity could transcend borders and where collaboration, rather than competition, would shape the future of knowledge. What emerged was a community of researchers united by the ambition to probe the fundamental structure of the Universe.
During a visit to this exceptional place, something triggered a deeper reflection about innovation beyond science itself. CERN had identified profound questions that fuel our understanding of the Universe. But what if these same questions could serve as a generative mindset for entrepreneurs navigating uncertain and complex horizons?
Behind the Proton Collider: Discovery Under Uncertainty
Behind CERN’s scientific achievements lies a distinctive way of organizing discovery. One of the most striking entry points into this mindset is the Proton Express, an interactive science experience that guides visitors through what a proton is, why it matters, and why they are being accelerated inside the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). Rather than focusing on applications or outcomes, the experience begins with a more fundamental question. What are we trying to understand about the nature of reality itself?
The LHC is the world’s most powerful particle accelerator. Built at CERN between 1998 and 2008 with the involvement of more than 18,000 researchers and hundreds of universities and laboratories across more than 100 countries, it represents one of the most ambitious scientific infrastructures ever created. Installed approximately 100 meters underground along the French–Swiss border near Geneva, the LHC spans a 27-kilometer ring of superconducting magnets and accelerating cavities capable of propelling protons to speeds approaching that of light. In doing so, it recreates conditions that existed microseconds after the Big Bang.
Since beginning operations in September 2008, the LHC has become the flagship of CERN’s accelerator complex. Yet what makes it remarkable from an innovation perspective is not only its scale or technical sophistication, but the nature of the commitment behind it. The investment was made without certainty about what would be discovered, when results would emerge, or how those discoveries might ultimately be used. The value lay in the questions being pursued, not in predefined solutions.
The Three Questions
After observing what a proton collider actually does, a natural question emerges. What are we using all of this for?
At CERN, the answer is framed through three deceptively simple but profoundly generative questions. These questions do more than structure scientific discovery. They inspire imagination, shape creative thinking, and offer unexpected tools for entrepreneurial innovation. Rather than prescribing solutions, they guide how problems are framed and explored under conditions of deep uncertainty.
1. Where do we come from?
This question seeks to understand the origins of matter and the unfolding of the Universe. At CERN, it involves probing the Universe’s first instants and the conditions that gave rise to everything we observe today.
In entrepreneurship and innovation, this question can be reframed as a return to first principles:
- What are the fundamental needs of human beings?
- What are we really made of, and what is truly necessary?
- Is there a need for something or for nothing?
For innovators, asking where we come from means revisiting the origins of industries, technologies, and societal challenges. It encourages a deeper examination of assumptions that are often taken for granted and opens space for needs and possibilities that have been overlooked.
2. What are we made of?
This question focuses on identifying the building blocks of nature and the laws that govern them, from the Standard Model and antimatter to dark matter and the fundamental forces shaping the Universe.
Just as CERN dissects the Universe at its smallest scales, innovators dissect value creation itself. In entrepreneurship, this becomes the art of deconstructing systems:
- What are the essential actors, incentives, and constraints?
- What are the fundamental components of a market, an organization, or a problem?
By breaking complex systems into their most basic elements, entrepreneurs can reimagine business models, redesign organizations, and identify new ways of creating and capturing value.
3. Where are we heading?
This question turns attention toward the future of mysteries like dark energy, the evolution of the cosmos, and yet unknown phenomena that may redefine our understanding of physics.
For startups and established organizations alike, it translates into strategic foresight:
- Which futures are emerging?
- How might technologies, markets, and societies evolve?
- How can solutions be designed to remain relevant in a rapidly changing world?
This question encourages scenario building, long-term thinking, and the capacity to anticipate change. It underpins ventures that look beyond today’s problems to address opportunities that may only fully emerge over time.
A Mindset for Innovation
Taken together, these three questions do more than guide scientific research at CERN. They represent a powerful, generative mindset for anyone seeking to innovate under conditions of uncertainty. Each question expands the imagination, deepens curiosity, and encourages more meaningful problem framing before solutions are defined. For entrepreneurs and leaders, this mindset shifts attention away from immediate outputs and toward the quality of inquiry itself.
In this sense, the proton collider becomes more than a scientific instrument. It serves as a metaphor for exploration itself. Developing the disciplined commitment to asking difficult questions without knowing in advance what answers will emerge or when they will arrive. This capacity to invest in uncertainty and to sustain long-term inquiry is increasingly central to transformational entrepreneurship.
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Exhibit 1
How CERN’s Three Questions Translate into Entrepreneurial Innovation
The ventures below illustrate how CERN’s foundational questions already inform innovation across quantum computing, medicine, energy, and space. They are not direct spinoffs in all cases, but reflect a shared logic of first-principles inquiry, long time horizons, and high uncertainty tolerance.
Where do we come from?
Origins, cosmology, and fundamental physics
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- PsiQuantum (US/UK) – Fault-tolerant quantum computing for simulating fundamental physics
- Alpine Quantum Technologies (Austria) – Trapped-ion systems for studying particle interactions
- Origin Quantum (China) – Quantum chips for advanced matter and physics simulations
What are we made of?
Particle physics, materials, and sensing technologies
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- ADVACAM (Finland/Czech Republic) – Super-resolution radiation imaging using CERN’s Medipix technology
- Tokamak Energy (UK) – Compact fusion using high-field magnet technology
- Arspectra (Switzerland) – Medical augmented reality using CERN spatial-tracking technologies
- Terabee (France) – Robotics and sensing based on time-of-flight measurement
Where are we heading?
Future infrastructures for Earth and space
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- Axiom Space (US) – Commercial space station development
- Interstellar Lab (France/US) – Bio-regenerative habitats for Earth, Moon, and Mars
- AstroForge (US) – Asteroid mining for critical materials
- ispace (Japan/Luxembourg) – Lunar robotic exploration and infrastructure
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Conclusion
These examples associated with CERN and its broader innovation ecosystem demonstrate that the three questions extend far beyond theoretical physics. They act as intellectual catalysts for ventures imagining new origins, redefining the building blocks of technology, and preparing humanity for entirely new frontiers. Whether through quantum startups exploring the Universe’s earliest moments, medical technologies born from particle detectors, or space companies designing the future of life beyond Earth, the spirit of CERN permeates a new generation of entrepreneurs.
By embracing the questions Where do we come from? What are we made of? Where are we heading? Innovators are learning how to frame problems more deeply, commit to longer horizons, and create the conditions from which genuinely new possibilities can emerge. In a world shaped by complexity and uncertainty, powerful innovations may begin, as they do at CERN, with the courage to ask the right questions.
About the Authors
