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

by Warren Berger

Part of building a culture of inquiry is teaching people to defer judgment while exploring new ideas and big questions. This is necessary because many of46 us are conditioned to react to questions by trying to answer them too quickly or by countering them “devil’s advocate” style. The more hardheaded within the group may need to be shown that innovative questioning works best when it starts with the impractical and works toward the practical. The “dreamers” should be given their moment to ask big, ambitious, impractical questions; the pragmatic “implementers”47 (to use Min Basadur’s term) will likely hold sway during the down-to-earth How stages of developing an idea and trying to make it real.