A More Beautiful Question: The Power of Inquiry to Spark Breakthrough Ideas

It took me a while to complete this book: despite it being relatively short and written in a very accessible style, it was dense with references and avenues for exploration, many of which I consulted as I read along.
Whereas questioning as a method may seem simplistic, it's an effective tool to look beyond accepted answers. While many of us do it instinctively, we tend to focus on the answers rather than on the quality of the question. Already I have started to apply this method at work and found it's given me new frameworks to work from, opening my curiosity and listening more carefully to what is being said around me.
I'm sure there's a lot more to be done in the strategic thinking realm, but this book is definitely an excellent first show more stop which will help to reframe and rethink the way we do business. show less

A More Beautiful Question is a flashy journey through the power of questioning to spark dialog, to bring people together, to upset the world, and too innovate. Berger synthesizes a lot of experience as journalist to look at the role that questioning plays in creativity, and develops a simple model based around "Why?-->What If?-->How?"

This book is best when it's selling ideas: Montessori schools as an antidote to how public schools beat questioning out of kids, the people at The Right Question Institute and IDEO. However, it commits the all-too-common error of assuming that because Silicon Valley people are rich, they are also wise. Berger tries to lay out a hagiographic account of heroically questioning tech founders, which doesn't show more match up with the actually process of innovation, or the very obvious limits to Silicon Valley ideology. Protip for Uber and AirBNB, wholesale violation of the law is not a business model. And likewise for Google and Facebook, advertising is not a human net good.

Also, questioning is hard. Trust me, as a PhD social scientist the most important part of a project is setting up your research question in a way that is both impactful and doable. Questioning is an action, but it also seems to be a behavior characteristic of a questioning mindset. Why do we stop asking questions? What if we never stopped? How do we ask questions again? This book says the answer is a kind of California zen. I'm less sure. show less

I was walking around Politics and Prose in Washington DC when I came upon this relative thin book. The title intrigued me so I started look into it. At first the book did not appeal to me much, although some of the chapters did seem interesting. I ended up buying it as a part of my personal mission to find anything and everything regarding improving myself and spurring my thinking process.

I am very glad that I did because this book has turned into one of those books that has affected my world view as well as changed my way of thinking. The basic premise is not all that revolutionary: In order to be more creative, to think better, to be innovative, one needs to ask better, more probing questions. Do you see that I wasn't all that show more impressed?

As I read the book, bits of wisdom and sparks of recognition came to me slowly but steadily. Warren Berger laid out a very convincing case that we, as a culture had become, through our own impatience and lazy assumptions unlearned our own ability to ask questions. We have become quite good as asking bad questions, lazy question, shallow questions, wrong questions.

As I read the book, I became more systematic about underlining key ideas, I became more engrossed in the art and practice of asking questions. Berger gives us a lot of precedence, as will any good business book writer, but he also challenges us with the questions that he was asking. It is all very meta and coupled. I must say that his process hooked me and made me think longer and more in depth about how I think and ask questions.

In the end I had mind mapped the entire book and I am going through the process of creating a cheat sheet of the lessons learned for myself as I am convinced that I will need to be reminded of the practice of asking questions in my daily life.

You can say that I liked this book, quite a bit. show less

Focusing more on getting back to our roots on asking questions than about a specific question, "A More Beautiful Question" focuses around how to return to place where we question the world around us. From an early age we're asking questions about everything around us, but somehow we stop doing that. I enjoyed the very "growth mindset" approach to questioning, but many of the examples given were more focused around innovating and entrepreneurship than more practical examples.

Accessible, practical, thought provoking. It applies to both business and personal life. That, in my opinion, describes this book.

I have used questions as a primary tool for years in my consulting work. It consistently is effective in getting my clients to explore thoughts they might not and/or have not explored otherwise. As Berger says, people are too busy to give much thought, certainly much deeper thought, to important issues. They just want the quick answer. In fact, they don't really know how to formulate the right questions that might help them.

Recently I facilitated a retreat of three people who were having difficulty in their business partnership. The two-day agenda consisted of almost nothing but questions that challenged show more them to probe issues more deeply. When we began the process, the partnership was strained and in trouble. Two days later, though not yet healed, there was much better mutual understanding, appreciation, and commitment to continuing the process of using questions.

When I came across Berger's book, a few weeks later, he messages all resonated

One client said to me some time ago, "I've got you figured out. You don't have any answers. You just ask questions." "You're right!," I said. The meeting was a significant success.

Nevertheless, Berger's book brought me more perspectives and a reinforced appreciation for the questioning process. show less

Хотя темы интересные, не покидает ощущение что автор журналист, который получает зарплату по 1000 знаков поэтому может расписывать то сё. Не понравилось так же начало (гл1 вопросы это силы ) - зато понравился конец (гл5 - личное использование). Хотя книга в начал бесила с каждой последующей главой становилась лучше и полезнее для меня.

Kind of stunned at the "thought provoking" comments. What a revelation! Asking questions! How is inquisitiveness, or simple "I wonder..." thinking so surprising to so many reviewers? Berger put together a collection of anecdotes (from a lot of other anecdote sources), and gets some credit for that research. Bottom line, this is Gladwell level fluff. Maybe a touch better. Gladwell's a tool.

I started getting weekend read recommendations from Scribd, three per Saturday, and this was a recommendation. I expect some of the others to be better.

Nitpick: Berger said in relating one of the anecdotes something about an "ATM machine". Seriously? That's one of the most annoying multiple double redundancies and a journalist should know better.