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

by Warren Berger

current theories of “design thinking,”40 used by IDEO and other leading designers to systematically solve problems, have laid out a process that starts with framing a problem and learning more about it (similar to my Why stage), then proceeds to generating ideas (which corresponds to What If), and eventually builds upon those ideas through prototyping (which could be thought of as the How stage). A similar progression—moving from understanding a problem, to imagining possible solutions, to then going to work on those possibilities—can also be seen in the creative problem-solving processes of the business consultant Min Basadur (who, in turn, owes a debt to earlier processes developed by the little-known but legendary Creative Problem Solving Institute of Buffalo, New York). Echoes of this are even in the classic four-stage process of creativity—Preparation/Incubation/Illumination/Implementation—developed nearly a century ago by the British psychologist Graham Wallas.