What If? Designing Innovative Companies with the Socratic Method of Management

What You'll Learn

• Why traditional top-down management stifles innovation — and how question-driven leadership unlocks it
• The core principles of Socratic questioning: systematic inquiry, intellectual humility, collaborative dialogue, and conceptual clarity
• How to shift from directive leadership (providing answers) to Socratic leadership (asking better questions)
• Four types of strategic questions: orienting, assumption-hunting, evidence-probing, and implication-exploring
• The Question-Driven Innovation Cycle — a structured process for embedding inquiry into organizational workflows
• Practical techniques including Question Storming, Assumption Audits, Pre-Mortems, and Question Boards
• Real-world case studies from Genentech, Zappos, and other organizations that implemented Socratic methods
• How to build question-friendly organizational cultures through team composition, reward systems, and physical environment design

Who This Book Is For

This book is for executives, innovation leaders, and managers who want to move beyond command-and-control leadership toward a model that taps into the collective intelligence of their teams. It's especially valuable for leaders in knowledge-intensive industries — technology, biotech, professional services — where breakthrough thinking matters more than incremental improvement. It's also a practical resource for anyone responsible for organizational transformation, R&D strategy, or culture change.

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