Warren Berger

Background

Warren Berger grew up in Whitestone, New York, the youngest of seven children. He graduated from Syracuse University's S. I. Newhouse School of Public Communications in 1980. After working as a newspaper journalist in Dallas, Berger moved back to New York and worked for several years as a magazine editor for CBS.

In 1990, Berger founded his independent writing business, with The New York Times as one of the main outlets for his writing. He wrote a business column for the Sunday Times, and also contributed culture articles regularly to the Arts & Leisure section as well as The New York Times Magazine. His feature stories also appeared in GQ, The Los Angeles Times Magazine, New York magazine, Reader’s Digest, and Business 2.0. He served as a contributing editor at Wired magazine from 1999 to 2001.

Innovation, Advertising, and Design Writing

Simultaneously, Berger pursued his interest in creativity in advertising by writing many articles for Ad Age’s Creativity, Communication Arts, Graphis, and Metropolis. In the mid-1990s, he formed an association with The One Club for Art & Copy, helping them launch the bimonthly publication ONE, about creativity in advertising, and then in 2007 launching the quarterly ONE: DESIGN. In 2001, he wrote the book Advertising Today, published by Phaidon Press. The book was included on Barnes & Noble’s best books of the year list, and was later included in a list of the “50 all time best books about media” compiled by The Independent of London.

Berger’s current project, A MORE BEAUTIFUL QUESTION: The Power of Inquiry to Spark Breakthrough Ideas, (Bloomsbury), is an examination of the ways deep questioning can lead to innovation and change, and how we can get better at doing it in both business and daily life. For the 250-page book, Berger interviewed leaders at dozens of companies such as Google, Netflix, IDEO, and airbnb, as well as hundreds of entrepreneurs, educators, artists, social activists, and basement tinkerers about the role of questioning in their successes. (See reviews and "Best of 2014" list citations for A More Beautiful Question.) Berger’s website "AMoreBeautifulQuestion.com" features hundreds of articles, videos, studies, and links about the powerful role of questioning in business, education, and daily life. Berger also speaks on the topics of innovation and questioning at businesses and conferences around the world.

Berger’s interest in questioning grew out of his 2009 book GLIMMER (published by The Penguin Press in the U.S.; Random House in Canada and Europe), which explored how designers think and innovate. Glimmer took readers behind-the-scenes into studios such as IDEO, Pentagram, and Smart Design, and schools such as Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) and the Stanford Graduate School of Product Design (the d.school), as well as profiling many international design thinkers including Marianne Cusato, Dean Kamen, Yves Behar, Brian Collins, Paula Scher, Stefan Sagmeister, Tim Brown, and Bruce Mau, who collaborated at length with Berger on the project. The book examines, up-close, the ways in which designers approach problems, utilize unique tools and techniques, and ultimately arrive at solutions, and shows how non-designers can apply these principles in their daily lives.

Berger currently resides in Mount Kisco, New York, with his wife, editor/webmaster Laura E. Kelly.

Nonfiction

Fiction

Anthology

The Best Business Stories of the Year (2001; Pantheon) (ISBN 978-0375725005)

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