A More Beautiful Question Book Summary

Book Summary

15 min

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Brief Summary

Questions should be encouraged because they lead to problem-solving solutions which result in creative innovations. You should follow the stage formula of why, what-if, and how to lead you to incredible new ideas.

About the Author

Warren Berger is an American journalist and host of the website AMostBeautifulQuestion.com. He has written about questioning. He graduated from Syracuse University 's S. I. Newhouse School of Public Communications in 1980.

He worked as a newspaper journalist in Dallas and then moved to New York to work as a magazine editor for CBS. In 1990, he found his independent writing business. He has contributed articles to the New York Times, GQ, The Los Angeles Magazine, etc. He also served as a contributing editor at Wired magazine from 1999 to 2001.

He pursued his interest in advertising by writing articles for Ad Age’s Creativity and other publications. He worked with The One Club for Art & Copy to help them launch the bimonthly publication ONE, about creativity in advertising and then in 2007, launching the quarterly ONE: Design.

Topics

Management & Leadership

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Key Insights

Warren Berger, the writer of “A More Beautiful Question: The Power of Inquiry to Spark Breakthrough Ideas,” decided to interview some of the world’s leading innovators.

What he discovered was that they were all exceptionally good at asking the right questions.

This makes sense as geniuses such as Einstein and Socrates stumbled upon their greatest discoveries because of their ability to ask questions.

We also know that top leaders in the market succeed because of their curiosity and innovations which help them beat out their competition.

“You don’t learn unless you question.”- Warren Berger

By asking questions, we can embrace change to become adaptable and flexible which helps us to move forward as strong leaders.

In these insights, you will learn how to ask the right questions.

Inquiry Has Power

In 1976, Van Phillips, a man who had recently lost one of his legs in a tragic boating accident, asked the question “If they can put a man on the moon, why can’t they make a decent foot?”

This simple question propelled Phillips to dig deeper. Phillips enrolled in a prosthetics program at Northwestern University. Then, he spent ten years developing and perfecting a new design for an artificial limb.

After every failed design, he would ask more questions in order to keep improving the limb.

The curiosity for the answers to his questions is what pushed him to keep going. It was what kept him perfecting the artificial limb design.

The question “why” is an important one. It takes note of the issue at hand, promotes a challenge, and holds context.

Reed Hastings, the founder of Netflix, asked why he had to pay late fees when he brought a movie back to Blockbuster. This is an example of a top-leader getting sick of the old way and asking “why?” in the hopes of finding a new way.

However, you can’t just ask “why?” You must also take action.

People who take action usually follow this formula:

They discover a problem and then ask “why?”

They brainstorm solutions.

They ask “how” questions when looking at possible solutions.

This can be called the “why, what if, and how sequence.” It’s a logical way to find a solution.

After Phillips asked “why?”, he started asking “what if?” That’s when he began finding innovative solutions to the problems he was having with his designs.

Phillips began studying springboard motion and animal anatomy to help spark some new ideas for improvement.

With this knowledge, Phillips made hundreds of designs and finally created the Flex-foot. This led to many more inventions. Without Phillips, amputees would not be climbing Mt.Everest or competing in the Olympics.

Asking the right questions can lead a person to amazing innovations, but we don’t all naturally have this inclination.

Why Do We Stop Asking Questions?

Children, naturally, ask a lot of questions. Between the ages of two and five, when the brain is rapidly developing, studies show a child asks approximately 40,000 questions.

After the age of five, the number of questions a child asks decreases. And from there it continues to decline.

“Don’t just teach your children to read. Teach them to question what they read....