Appreciative Inquiry, a concept and approach conceived and described in the work of Dr. David Cooperrider and his colleagues at Case Western Reserve’s school of Organization Behavior, is a worldview, a paradigm of thought and understanding that holds organizations to be affirmative systems created by humankind as solutions to problems. It is a theory, a mindset, and an approach to analysis that leads to organizational learning and creativity.

Used in place of the traditional problem solving approach—finding what is wrong and forging solutions to fix the problems—Appreciative Inquiry seeks what is “right” in an organization. It is a habit of mind, heart, and imagination that searches for the success, the life-giving force, the incidence of joy. It moves toward what the organization is doing right and provides a frame for creating an imagined future that builds on and expands the joyful and life-giving realities as the metaphor and organizing principle of the organization.