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Questions Are the New Answers, with Warren Berger | Big Think

Big Think | December 14, 2025



Questions Are the New Answers, with Warren Berger
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Journalist Warren Berger discusses how thinking in questions can catalyze innovation and reveal more effective answers. The time to adopt this mindset is early and Berger advocates for teaching this skill in primary schools. Berger is the author of A More Beautiful Question (http://goo.gl/rUr785).
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WARREN BERGER:

Warren Berger is a speaker on innovation and the author of A More Beautiful Question: The Power of Inquiry to Spark Breakthrough Ideas (Bloomsbury, March 2014).
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TRANSCRIPT:

Warren Berger: You know, the idea that questions are becoming more valuable than answers it seems kind of counterintuitive, but it’s actually an idea that’s being really embraced these days in Silicon Valley and other areas of other centers of innovation. And the reason why is if you look at a lot of the innovations and breakthroughs today and you trace them back, as I did in my research, to their origin, a lot of times what you find at the root of it all is a great question; a beautiful question of someone asking why isn’t someone doing this or what if someone tried to do that? So I found that questions are often at the root of innovation. And that’s why in Silicon Valley these days they’re actually saying questions are the new answers. But at the same time it’s important to note that questions aren’t just important to innovators or tech people, they’re a survival skill for all of us. And that becomes even more true in a time of dynamic change.

I mean we’ve got so much that we have to adapt to. We have to solve problems. We have to deal with change, uncertainty and questioning is the tool or one of the primary tools that lets you do that. A great definition I saw for questioning is that questioning enables us to organize our thinking around what we don’t know. So in a time when so much knowledge is all around us, answers are at our fingertips, we really need great questions in order to be able to know what to do with all that information and find our way to the next answer.

If you look at the research, a four-year-old girl is asking like as much as 300 questions a day. And when kids go into school you see this steady decline that happens as they go through the grade levels to the point where questioning in schools, by junior high school, is almost at zero. There are a lot of reasons why questioning declines as we get older. But one of the key issues is that in schools we really value the answers. And there is almost no value placed on asking a good question. In fact, the teachers now are so stressed to teach to the test and to cover so much material that they really can’t even entertain a lot of questions even if they want to. So it becomes a real problem in our school system, in our education system.

I think people are starting to address it, try to deal with it. In my research I found a number of teachers, schools that are trying to place more emphasis on questioning. I came upon a great nonprofit group, the Right Question Institute, that has developed a whole system of class exercises that are just focused on encouraging kids to ask as many questions as possible, just formulate questions and think in questions. And that’s kind of the direction we need to move in. It’s simply a matter of finding ways within the school system to allow and encourage kids to think of their own questions.

Directed/Produced by Jonathan Fowler and Dillon Fitton

Journalist Warren Berger discusses how thinking in questions can catalyze innovation and reveal more effective answers. The time to adopt this mindset is early and Berger advocates for teaching this skill in primary schools. Berger is the author of A More Beautiful Question (http://goo.gl/rUr785).

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Written by Big Think

Comments

This post currently has 36 comments.

  7. @OmniphonProductions

    December 14, 2025 at 10:18 am

    I find it hilariously and infuriatingly ironic that the two most recent posts on this video are testimonials for Islam and Christianity, both of which require unquestioning acceptance of that which blatantly defies empirical fact despite being significantly preceded by Socratic Method.  Only churches and porn sites could be arrogant enough to "post pamphlets" on an utterly unrelated video feed.

    Now that I got that off my chest, at least as far back as Socrates, questions have been teachers' #1 tools.  Unfortunately as noted in this video, modern education de-emphasizes the search for knowledge and simply spoon feeds students that which bureaucrats deem important, destroying individuals' capacity for independent, analytical thought.  Thankfully, Questions are becoming the Newly Rediscovered path to Answers.  Hopefully it's not too late.

  8. @shkotayd9749

    December 14, 2025 at 10:18 am

    Reminds me of the Mentat philosophy in the Dune series 😀

    And I think its true too!  Discoveries should lead to more and better questions, and the right questions make all the difference in the world 😀 

  9. @morganthem

    December 14, 2025 at 10:18 am

    I'm thinking socratic method and such….. 

    There is a TED talk about better and better scientific ignorance…. that is, to find even finer ways in which you are ignorant is the real process of science, and not as it would seem to find all answers. David Bohm talks about science having a huge misundertaking in its affinity for materialism as a way to explain all that loses a kind of essential process-ism it inherently has always had, is still having, and will always have. Better questions are a necessity yes but the fact that this is treated like something novel is frightening. We need to be far beyond this philosophically and we need to do it very soon.

  10. @Zerepzerreitug

    December 14, 2025 at 10:18 am

    I'm not sure if its true or not, but I remember reading that Richard Feynman's parents wouldn't ask him when he was a kid about what he had learned in school that day. Rather, they asked him about what he had asked that day at school.
    I think simple things like that can change a person's focus on how to learn. Great video Big Think 🙂

  12. @worldshaper1723

    December 14, 2025 at 10:18 am

    Mile bozavich, I'm a Muslim and i don't know what religion you're talking about. Because in Islam, asking to much questions with critical thinking can lead to "hell", they say. Having the right to ask questions is having the right question everything even the prophet or allah, and neither of us have that right.
    Actually you can be killed because of your questions.
    I'm sorry, man. Is just my opinion comings from my experience as a long life Muslim, with some facts.

  21. @jeebersjumpincryst

    December 14, 2025 at 10:18 am

    Great vid, bigthink!!! We all need to learn some more "Newspeak", as it really is the way forward! and NewMaths –> 2+2=5.
    Burt seriously – good vid, and I really do agree with the observation of children asking less and less, the older they get. I wonder why this is so? I can think of a few reasons. cab u?
    have a good one 🙂
    regards,
    Jono

  26. @Geist452

    December 14, 2025 at 10:18 am

    only our education system could make the subject matter of world war 2 seem so concrete and uninvolved. I didn't learn or keep a thing from those classes, and as a youngin it was the only opportunity i was given to talk about something important; it should have been the foundation for my education.

    i'm not adverse to the idea of indexing, but it should be optional, elective and assisted.  i would have been happier indexing what actually came out of the factories, at least there is some logic behind it. I still don't understand learning about critical situations without considering all the possibilities, parallels, and characters.  

  27. @JoeGP

    December 14, 2025 at 10:18 am

    a kid/student who asks questions in class is a kid/student who pays attention and is interested in learning.
    All i did in high school and collage is write down what the teachers and professors were saying, the only questioning i was doing is wondering how they managed to get a job.

  28. @ImJustLeon

    December 14, 2025 at 10:18 am

    People are afraid of people who ask questions because they don't conform with the rest. So one who ask questions may suggest other ways of doing things wether better or worse. Most humans are creatures of habit and afraid of change.

  29. @manicenigmatic5329

    December 14, 2025 at 10:18 am

    This is not new. Jesus paved the way when it came to radical and challenging questions. Since then every student who is smart knows study does not encourage good answers but the ability to ask the right questions. Theologians have since led the field in asking essential questions to make sense of life and life after life, as we should know it.
    Big Think?

  30. @MiloBoz

    December 14, 2025 at 10:18 am

    Really though, Islam is the perfect solution for the problems you are describing.  Instead of force feeding women and children the same old regurgitated garbage, it's time to evolve as human beings to a higher point than animals.  Atheists say we came from animals, so how can they think of themselves as anything more?  In fact, a human being who considers themselves an animal is worse than an animal in the eyes of Allah (swt).  Of course, this is me attacking the idea not the person.  I think in many ways atheists are closer to truth than a lot of self-proclaimed righteous people.  In any case, I invite you to contemplate about Islam inshallah.  

  35. @Shermingtan

    December 14, 2025 at 10:18 am

    Not really a new discovery or idea, the brightest minds have been suggesting this for a very long time now. But our education systems seem to mainly focus on pumping as much "facts" and figures (a lot of it will be worthless to them thanks to the half-life of knowledge) into young minds and then throwing them into the world. Having no idea how to ask the right questions and structuring a path to get the right answer.
    Knowledge will be outdated, critical thinking and logical conclusions will never be.

Comments are closed.

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