Problem solving as a process for inspiring and sustaining human systems change is limited.  Deficit-based analysis, while powerful in diagnosis, often undermines human organizing, because it evokes a sense of threat, separation, defensiveness and deference to experts and hierarchies.

Community innovation methods that evoke stories, and affirm and compel groups of people to envision positive images of the future grounded in the best of the past, and act on behalf of those inspiring images, have greater potential to expand civic engagement and produce deep and sustaining change.

Appreciative Inquiry (AI) is a tool for doing this. Incorporating all of the voices in the community, AI leverages the most positive possibilities for collective imagination and change. Unlike more traditional tools and models that focus on solving problems, AI focuses on what is working well by engaging people in asking questions around affirmative topics that evoke powerful, grounded stories. Sharing those stories stretches the collective imagination. New partnerships can then be mobilized to bring the desired future into being. 

Communities, organizations and groups globally are adopting AI methods to cultivate hope, build capacity, unleash collective appreciation and imagination, and bring about positive change.  It works to understand the best of what is, imagine what can be, and create what will be.