Example

THE BIRTH OF APPRECIATIVE INQUIRY: A change hero story

Appreciative Inquiry was born at Case Western University in Cleveland, Ohio. David Cooperrider was a Ph.D. student doing some field work at the Cleveland Clinic, a well-known and very well run hospital. Cooperrider was asked to work on solving a number of small problems; however, the hospital was so well run that searching out problems did not make sense to Cooperrider. He mentioned to his supervisor Surish Shrivastva that he would prefer to research what was working well. He was told to go ahead. The inquiry into what was going well energized the participants and had such a dramatic effect on the performance of the hospital that the Board of Directors asked Cooperrider to develop a change process that could be applied to all departments. AI was born in that moment. One of the first professional uses of AI was with Avon Mexico where the client went from being plagued with sexual harassment issues to winning an award as one of the best places in Mexico for women to work.