 If you're thinking of using a new and unproven technology, say for instance, releasing genetically modified bacteria into the environment to detect and remove a contaminant like arsenic, how do you decide if it's a safe and sensible thing to do? And how do you work out in the grand scheme of things if the new tech really is better than what we're currently using to address the problems we're trying to solve? The usual way we make risk decisions is to gather and interpret all the evidence we can on what we think are the right questions, which are usually how risky is the new technology, and perhaps how can we make it safer? This rather traditional approach to assessing risk can give us answers to narrow questions, but when we're grappling with new technologies or even new uses of old technologies, there are sometimes more relevant questions we should be asking. Of course, the easiest question to ask about something new is, is it safe? But as questions go, it's actually not that helpful. Sadly, nothing is ever 100% safe, and sometimes small risks are actually well worth taking. Because of this, just asking if something is safe can sometimes be misleading, especially when the current technologies of products we're using to solve the same problem already have their own risks. In this case, something new that isn't completely safe might still be the safer option. The problem is, the choices we're trying to make are not just about the risks or benefits. In order to make smart choices, we also have to consider the problem we're trying to solve. Here we find that conventional approaches to risk assessment are good at telling us what to worry about, but what we really need are smart risk management approaches that help us understand what to do. One way forward here is an idea developed by my colleague Adam Finkel. It's called solution-focused risk assessment, and it's an approach that is particularly helpful when it comes to grappling with new and emerging technologies. Solution-focused thinking starts by asking what we can do to solve a problem, not just how bad the problem is. And when what we can do involves a new technology, this means asking what it promises and how this differs from what we've been achieving without it. This leads to a basic question. Can the new technology fulfill one or more human needs in better ways than we have at present? And by better, we mean, is it likely to reduce more risks than it potentially creates? Clearly, if we can be confident that a new technology ends up offering greater benefits and lower risks than how we do things at the moment, it's going to be more attractive than one that offers lower benefits and greater risks. And so we end up balancing the best way to get to where we want to be as a society, rather than worrying about specific risks in isolation. The advantage of this Solution-focused approach is that it focuses our attention on questions that are important for our collective future health, well-being and happiness, and away from questions that we can find answers to, but aren't that helpful. It also encourages everyone from political leaders to voters who elect them to think about innovative and ambitious solutions to challenges that we may have grown needlessly comfortable living with. For example, take disposable plastic water bottles. Depending on how these are manufactured, they may release small quantities of chemicals into the environment that act like artificial hormones and disrupt the endocrine systems of humans and animals. The US Environmental Protection Agency, or EPA, has been trying to set safe levels in water for each of these chemicals for decades now, and maybe one day we'll reach an agreement on a set of acceptably safe levels for each of these substances. But even if we do reach mission accomplished on the risks from endocrine disruptors, this will do nothing about the broader environmental and climate impacts of manufacturing, using and disposing of over 50 billion bottles a year. And that's just in the United States alone. In this case, a Solution-focused approach may suggest we try to nudge people's drinking habits so that fewer disposable bottles are used, or even use subsidies or taxes or even infrastructure spending to bring back the days when cold fresh water was readily available from public water fountains on street corners and inside buildings. Dreaming up and testing waste reduce all impacts rather than simply displacing risks from one area to another is especially important when grappling with new and emerging technologies. Take synthetic biology and gene editing, for instance. These are technologies that could help us to get places we might want to be. For example, by making it easier to convert plants into fuel, or even to resurrect extinct species like the woolly mammoth, and yes, some people really do want to do this. Or even to eliminate mosquitoes that carry devastating diseases like dengue and malaria. In cases like these, focusing on individual risks like whether genetically modified mosquitoes are safe may give us some answers, but these won't be that helpful in getting to where we really want to be. Instead, using a solution-focused risk assessment approach, we can begin to talk about and agree on what we actually want to achieve. And this might include things like what the pros and cons are of current approaches like using pesticides, for instance, and where new technologies might or might not be better than the status quo. In some cases, we may find that existing ways of dealing with risks and benefits are the best option. In others, we may be surprised to discover that new technologies are actually likely to make our lives better. And most provocatively, in some cases, we may find that by asking what we can do, we'll start asking ambitious questions about what we need to be able to do. In other words, we'll start to search for solutions we would like to see beyond the ones we just happen to have. Either way, we have the opportunity to make informed choices on building a better world rather than getting tied up in knots as we chase unhelpful answers to the wrong questions. And at the end of the day, this way of thinking doesn't diminish the role of risk assessment. Rather, it empowers risk assessment to dream things that never were and say, why not?