The World Cafe

"The World Cafe" is an easy-to-use process for fostering collaborative dialogue and creating innovative possibilities for action particularly in large groups. Anyone interested in creating "conversations that matter" can engage the World Cafe approach, with its' seven simple design principles, to improve people's collective capacity to share knowledge and shape the future together. Using the World Cafe process and principles empowers leaders and other professionals to intentionally create dynamic networks of conversation around an organization or community's real work and critical questions, improving both personal relationships and collective performance.Part of "Berrett-Koehler's" series of books on the most popular, participative, engaging methods of changing communities and organizations, this title introduces readers to, the World Cafe, a simple, yet powerful process for catalyzing and leading catalytic conversations that has been used by tens of thousands of people around the world to tackle real life issues and questions. It includes real-world stories - from widely varied geographical, cultural, business, government, non-profit, community and educational settings, including Hewlett-Packard, Saudi Aramco, the nation of Singapore, the University of Texas and many others - show how the Cafe process produces business and social value.It breaks new ground in offering an almost infinitely scalable design for creating constructive dialogue both in very large groups and with people who have not had prior dialogue training. It clearly articulates seven key design principles that, when used in combination, create the conditions for breakthrough thinking. It includes a foreword by Margaret J.Wheatley, author of the bestselling "Leadership and the New Science", "A Simpler Way", and "Turning to One Another"; and an afterword by Peter Senge, author of "The Fifth Discipline".