"The Harvard Business Review looked at 300 of the most creative, successful executives in business and found that they shared a number of tendencies and characteristics, but one stood out at the top of the list--they all were master questioners. It's notnecessity, but a question--a "beautiful" question--that is the mother of invention. The world's leading innovators, inventors, business entrepreneurs, and creative minds, seem to be exceptionally good at asking questions. For some, their greatest successes--their breakthrough inventions, hot startup companies, the radical solutions they'd found to stubborn problems--could be traced to a "beautiful" question, or series of questions, they'd formulated and then answered. Innovator and writer Warren Berger, who's been asking questions his entire life, brilliantly captures these innovative query-makers to try and determine what makes a question particularly beautiful, from Tim Westegren wondering how to "map the DNA of music," a project that would grow into the wildly successful Pandora internet radio service, to Abby Brown, creating a school desk with a raised seat as she thought about how she could accommodate some fidgeting students. As A More Beautiful Question will illustrate, whether we're solving toughpersonal or professional problems, rejuvenating businesses, or schools, or government, or re-inventing the ways we live... it all begins with asking the right questions"--
We're all hungry today for better answers. But first, we must learn to ask the right questions. In this groundbreaking book, journalist and innovation expert Warren Berger shows that one of the most powerful forces for igniting change in business and in our daily lives is a simple, under-appreciated tool--one that has been available to us since childhood.Questioning--deeply, imaginatively, "beautifully"--can help us identify and solve problems, come up with game-changing ideas, and pursue fresh opportunities. So why are we often reluctant to ask "Why "
Berger's surprising findings reveal that even though children start out asking hundreds of questions a day, questioning "falls off a cliff" as kids enter school. In an education and business culture devised to reward rote answers over challenging inquiry, questioning isn't encouraged--and, in fact, is sometimes barely tolerated.
And yet, as Berger shows, the most creative, successful people tend to be expert questioners. They've mastered the art of inquiry, raising questions no one else is asking--and finding powerful answers. The author takes us inside red-hot businesses likeGoogle, Netflix, IDEO, and Airbnb to show how questioning is baked into their organizational DNA. He also shares inspiring stories of artists, teachers, entrepreneurs, basement tinkerers, and social activists who changed their lives and the world around them--by starting with a "beautiful question."
Berger explores important questions, such as:
- Why aren't we nurturing kids' natural ability to question--and what can parents and schools do about that?
- Since questioning is a starting point for innovation, how might companies and business leaders begin to encourage and exploit it?
- And most important, how can each of us re-ignite that questioning spark--and use inquiry as a powerful means to rethink and reinvent our lives?
A More Beautiful Question outlines a practical Why / What If / How system of inquiry that can guide you through the process of innovative questioning--helping you find imaginative, powerful answers to your own "beautiful questions."
