A More Beautiful Question (35 page)

I’m grateful to the following people for the significant time spent talking to me for this book: the inspirational Min Basadur, the remarkable Van Phillips, Charles Warren, David Kord Murray, Randy Komisar, Gauri Nanda, Deborah Meier, and Hal Gregersen.

And I want to mention a few people who shared their time and didn’t get quoted: Geoff Deane of Intellectual Ventures, Naomi Simson, Dennis Bartels of the Exploratorium museum, and Oliver Burkeman.

I’d like to give special mention here to the Right Question Institute, and the two people who created it, Dan Rothstein and Luz Santana. I believe the work they’re doing on behalf of teaching the art of questioning is unquestionably valuable.

And I should also acknowledge and thank some people who provided inspiration at the formative stages: the designer Bruce Mau, whose “Ask Stupid Questions” principle was a starting point for me; the designer Brian Collins, who first suggested that “stupid questions” can also (in some cases) be thought of as “beautiful questions”; and TED founder Richard Saul Wurman, who was the first “master questioner” I interviewed (and who, in the process, questioned most of my questions).

My thanks to
Fast Company
and
Harvard Business Review
for running some of my early posts/articles about questioning. I also want to cite several publications/websites that were extremely valuable in terms of providing some of my raw material:
Fast Company
, which does a such great, exhaustive job of covering innovation; Brain Pickings, Maria Popova’s amazing site for anyone interested in creativity;
Wired
magazine; and, of course, the
New York Times
, where a number of the “question stories” in the book were first reported (and special thanks to the
Times
’s Adam Bryant, whose “Corner Office” column provided many great leads on CEOs who question).

Thank you to the “Marmaduke Writing Factory,” a New York–based writers’ collective of which I am a founding member. I appreciate the support of fellow writers Bob Sullivan, Deborah Schupack, Kate Buford, Marilyn Johnson, Mary Murphy, and Irene Levine (thanks also to Irene’s husband, Jerome, for snapping a great author photo). Thank you to John Krysko and Nancy Rosanoff, who own the beautiful restored mansion where we write. And I’m indebted in particular to two members of the writers’ group, Joseph Wallace and Benjamin Cheever, who were there to offer advice or just to listen.

Thank you to the Berger family and to the Kelly family for their support and encouragement. And above all, thank you to Laura E. Kelly, my creative partner in work and in life. She was incredibly involved in this book at each step of the journey—helping to shape the idea as well as the writing, applying her sharp editing skills, and doing a marvelous job creating the AMBQ website. When the book was finished, she used her new media/marketing savvy to help me to launch it into the world. She did everything, it seems—and I didn’t even have to ask.

Notes

Introduction: Why Questioning?

  
1
   
That changed during my work . . .
The articles appeared in
Wired
,
Harvard Business Review
, and
Fast Company
; the book was
Glimmer: How Design Can Transform Your Business, Your Life, and Maybe Even the World
(New York: Penguin Press, 2009).

  
2
   
a company that “runs on questions” . . .
This Eric Schmidt quote has appeared in many articles, including an interview of the business consultant/author Paul Sloane by Vern Burkhardt,
IdeaConnection
newsletter, July 25, 2009.

  
3
   
“Ask yourself an interesting enough question . . .”
Maria Popova,
“Chuck Close on Creativity, Work Ethic, and Problem-Solving vs. Problem-Creating,”
BrainPickings, December 27, 2012,
http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2012/12/27/chuck-close-on-creativity/
. The Chuck Close quote originally appeared in the book
Inside the Painter’s Studio
,
by Joe Fig (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Architectural Press, 2009).

  
4
   
he reckoned that if he had an hour . . .
As I noted, this may or may not have been said by Einstein. It is widely attributed to him in various articles and posts on the Internet. However, my researcher Susan O’Brien was unable to trace the quote back to Einstein. She also noted that another version of this quote is floating around, in which Einstein says he’d spend the first fifty-five minutes making sure he was “solving the right problem.” However, we do know, from many other things he said, that Einstein was a firm believer in the importance of questioning. “The important thing,” he said, “is not to stop questioning.” For more on this subject see my post on AMoreBeautifulQuestion.com “Einstein and Questioning: Exploring the Inquiring Mind of One of Our Greatest Thinkers,” http://amorebeautifulques tion.com/einstein-questioning/.

  
5
   
A recent study found the average . . .
Telegraph
staff, “Mothers Asked Nearly 300 Questions a Day, Study Finds,”
Telegraph
, March 28, 2013, www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/9959026/Mothers -asked-nearly-300-questions-a-day-study-finds.html. (Though the headline says “nearly 300 questions,” when the study focused on four-year-old girls, the number of questions rose to 390 per day.)

  
6
   
The business-innovation guru Clayton Christensen . . .
From my interview with Christensen, January 8, 2013.

  
7
   
rather, it has “turbocharged” it . . .
From my interviews with Gregersen, January and April of 2013. The research conducted by Dyer, Gregersen, and Christensen was conducted over six years, involving more than three thousand business executives. It showed “questioning” to be one of five key characteristics (and in some ways the most important) associated with being a successful, creative business leader. The results appeared initially in the
Harvard Business Review
in December 2009 and later in Dyer, Gregersen, and Christensen’s
The Innovator’s DNA: Mastering the Five Skills of Disruptive Innovators
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard Business Review Press, 2011).

  
8
   
The neurologist John Kounios observes . . .
From my interview with Kounios, November 2012.

  
9
   
“We’ve transitioned into always transitioning” . . .
The general principle of constant transitioning was discussed in my interview with Brown, March 4, 2013. However, this particular quote appeared in Heather Chaplin’s interview “John Seely Brown on Interest-Driven Learning, Mentors and the Importance of Play,” spotlight.macfound.org, March 1, 2012.

10
   
The esteemed physicist Edward Witten . . .
From one of several e-mail exchanges I had with Witten in February 2013. He also said something similar in the article “Physics’ Sharpest Mind Since Einstein,” CNN, July 5, 2005.

11
   
on Google, some of the most popular queries . . .
Quentin Hardy and Matt Richtel, “Don’t Ask? Internet Still Tells,”
New York Times
, November 21, 2012.

Chapter 1: The Power of Inquiry

  
1
   
Back in 1976, long before there . . .
From my interviews with Van Phillips, beginning in 2009, and most recently in December 2012. I also quoted several lines from Phillips’s speech at the 2011 Cusp Conference in Chicago. Other source material included Martha Davidson, “Artificial Parts: Van Phillips,”
Smithsonian
, March 9, 2005; and Carol Pogash, “A Personal Call to a Prosthetic Invention,”
New York Times
, July 2, 2008.

  
2
   
“stopped thinking because he ‘knows’” . . .
I came across this quote in Maria Popova, “Frank Lloyd Wright’s Thoughts on Learning,”
Atlantic
,
June 8, 2012; excerpted from Bruce Brooks Pfeiffer,
Frank Lloyd Wright on Architecture, Nature, and the Human Spirit: A Collection of Quotations
(Portland, OR: Pomegranate, 2011).

  
3
   
Mark Noonan, who once, after suffering . . .
From my 2009 interview with Noonan, originally for the book
Glimmer
.

  
4
   
“We think someone else—someone smarter . . .”
From Regina Dugan’s March 2012 TED talk, “From Mach 20 Glider to Humming-bird Drone,” http://www.ted.com/talks/regina_dugan_from_mach_20_glider_to_humming_bird_drone.html.

  
5
   
“are the engines of intellect . . .”
David Hackett Fischer,
Historians’ Fallacies: Toward a Logic of Historical Thought
(New York: Harper & Row, 1970). Thank you to Bill Welter for bringing this to my attention.

  
6
   
“shine a light on where you need . . .”
I am greatly indebted to the cofounders of the Right Question Institute, Dan Rothstein and Luz Santana. Most of the quotes from them come from my interviews with them in February and March of 2013. I also drew information from Rothstein and Santana’s book,
Make Just One Change: Teach Students to Ask Their Own Questions
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press, 2012).

  
7
   
The late Frances Peavey, a quirky . . .
The quote is from Fran Peavey,
By Life’s Grace: Musings on the Essence of Social Change
(New Society Publishers, 1994). I found this quote in an excerpt from Peavey’s book that was reprinted in “Creating a Future We Can Live With” (IC#40), published in spring 1995 by Context Institute.

  
8
   
Paul Harris, an education professor . . .
From my interview with Harris, November 2012; I also drew information from Harris’s book
Trusting What You’re Told: How Children Learn From Others
(Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2012).

  
9
   
“I know more about my ignorance . . .”
From my interviews with Wurman, April 2008 and fall of 2012. Wurman has a chapter devoted to questioning in his book
Information Anxiety 2
(Indianapolis: QUE, 2001).

10
   
The author Stuart Firestein, in his . . .
Stuart Firestein,
Ignorance: How it Drives Science
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012); the book came to my attention when it was featured on BrainPickings, April 2, 2012, in a post that also highlighted Firestein’s line “enthralled with answers,” http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2012/04/02/stuart-firestein-ignorance-science/.

11
   
Harvard Business Review
writer Polly LaBarre . . .
Polly LaBarre, “The Question That Will Change Your Organization,”
Harvard Business Review
, November 10, 2011.

12
   
How might we prepare during peacetime to offer help in times of war? . . .
Information from The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies website at http://www.ifrc.org/en/who-we-are/history.

13
   
The neurologist and author Ken Heilman . . .
From my interview with Heilman, November 2012. He expands on this in his book
Creativity and the Brain
(Psychology Press, 2005).

14
   
“You don’t have to hold a position . . .”
LaBarre, “Question That Will Change.”

15
   
“blend of humility and confidence” . . .
From Jeff Dyer, Hal Gregersen, and Clayton M. Christensen,
The Innovator’s DNA: Mastering the Five Skills of Disruptive Innovators
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard Business Review Press, 2011).

16
   
“In our culture, not to know . . .”
Robinson’s quote, from his “School of Life” talk, appeared in BrainPickings, April 17, 2012, in
Maria Popova,
“Sir Ken Robinson on How Finding Your Element Changes Everything,” http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2012/04/17/sir-ken-robinson-school-of-life/.

17
   
according to David Cooperrider . . .
From my interview with David Cooperrider, December 2012. Cooperrider is the author of many articles and books on appreciative inquiry, including
Appreciative Inquiry: A Positive Revolution in Change
, coauthored with Diana Whitney (San Francisco: Berrett-Kohler, 2005).

18
   
“to organize our thinking around . . .”
This quote first appeared in Leon Nayfakh’s excellent article “Are We Asking the Right Questions?,”
Boston Globe
, May 20, 2012. However, the quote was originally attributed in that article to Dan Rothstein of RQI; Rothstein informed me that the line actually originated with his colleague at RQI, Steve Quatrano, and Quatrano confirmed that with me.