The World Café Resources

The World Café is an easy-to-use method for creating dialogue around questions that matter to the real-life situations of organizations and communities. Below are resources to learn more about and host your own cafés, or to improve the quality of your questions to generate creative insights and breakthrough thinking.

Learning Package with resources by Juanita Brown, David Isaacs, and the World Café Community

Start practicing right away with this bundle of complementary resources that contains everything you need to know about hosting and engaging in World Café conversations around the questions that matter most to you. Save over 20% when you buy the whole learning package, or choose the individual resources that best meet your needs.
Order #LP0603, various formats, $79.00 (a savings of 20%)


The World Café: Shaping Our Futures Through Conversations That Matter by Juanita Brown with David Isaacs and the World Café Community

This is a compendium of experience, stories, insights, wisdom, practical tips, and resources on this methodology and the importance of conversation as a core process in our lives and work. The authors outline a set of principles that underpin the practice of a successful World Café. In addition, they highlight the importance of listening and questioning as key elements in sharing knowledge and allowing innovative possibilities for action to emerge.
Order #WC04, softcover, 242 pages, $19.95

The World Café: A Resource Guide for Hosting Conversations That Matter by Juanita Brown and the World Café Community, illustrated by Nancy Margulies

In this beautifully illustrated booklet, Juanita Brown collaborates with Nancy Margulies and the World Café Community to articulate seven guiding principles for people to use to host their own Café. Learn about the thousands of people on five continents who have experienced the World Café, a model for setting up the ideal Café for your group, the roles of the hosts, crafting powerful questions, Café assumptions and etiquette, and more!
Order #WC01, softcover, 28 pages, illustrated, $15.00

The Art of Powerful Questions: Catalyzing Insight, Innovation, and Action by Eric E. Vogt, Juanita Brown, and David Isaacs; illustrations by Nancy Margulies

In a growing number of organizations, leaders are discovering that crafting powerful questions is a key skill in today's knowledge economy. Questions open the door to dialogue and discovery. By generating creative insights and breakthrough thinking, they can lead to action on important issues and ignite change. This 16-page volume provides a practical framework for formulating powerful questions, a set of skills for leading "inquiring systems," and examples of companies that have created business value by improving the quality of their questions.
Order #WC03, softcover, 16 pages, illustrated, $10.95

The World Café: Living Knowledge Through Conversations That Matter Dissertation by Juanita Brown

In this reprint of her breakthrough doctoral dissertation, Juanita Brown describes the "birth" of the World Café and her own intellectual journey in discovering the power of conversation for accessing collective intelligence, building new knowledge, and bringing forth desired futures.
Order #WC02, softcover, 342 pages, $20.00

The World Café: An Innovative Approach to Dialogue by Juanita Brown and David Isaacs

This quick-reference tool explains the World Café principles and highlights the key points to consider when conducting a Café conversation in your organization.
Order #PG23, 5-1/2 x 8-1/2-inch laminated guide, $5.00, volume discounts available


The World Café: Living Knowledge Through Conversations That Matter by Juanita Brown and David Isaacs

In this article, Juanita Brown and David Isaacs introduce The World Café, an innovative methodology for enhancing the capacity for collaborative thinking about critical issues by linking small-group and large-group conversations. In the process, knowledge grows, a sense of the whole becomes real, and new possibilities become visible. The authors explain the five key operating principles to host a successful café as well as provide practical examples of how people are intentionally using the metaphor of The World Café to guide strategic work in larger systems.
Order #120501, PDF article, 5 pages, $6.00


Conversation As a Core Business Process by Juanita Brown and David Isaacs

In this article, Juanita Brown and David Isaacs discuss how conversation might be the core process in any company for sharing critical business information. Through this exchange of information, employees not only learn together and develop the organization's intellectual capital, they also create sustainable business value in the knowledge economy. The authors cite many examples of companies that are experimenting with simple innovations to foster high-quality conversations, and they outline key leadership capabilities, such as framing strategic questions and creating a climate of discovery, that support organizational learning.
Order #071001, PDF article, 5 pages, $6.00

Strategic Questions: Engaging People's Best Thinking by Juanita Brown, David Isaacs, Eric Vogt, and Nancy Margulies

To engage people’s best thinking about complex issues, leaders need to develop greater capacities for fostering "inquiring systems." The leadership challenges of the next 20 years will likely revolve around the art of catalyzing networks of people rather than solely managing hierarchies as in the past. Seeing the organization in this way enables members at every level to realize that their thoughtful participation in discovering and exploring questions that matter can make a difference to the whole system.
Order #130901, PDF article, 5 pages, $6.00

On Conversation and Collective Questioning: Theory and Practice of the World Café by Alan Stewart

In this article, Alan Stewart offers a review of The World Café: Shaping Our Futures Through Conversations That Matter (Berrett-Koehler, 2005), co-authored by Juanita Brown, David Isaacs, and an array of collaborators.
Order #160506, PDF article, 2 pages, $6.00

The World Café Catalyzing Large Scale Collective Learning by Juanita Brown, David Isaacs, Nancy Margulies, and Gary Warhaftig

This item is a PDF version of the article that originally appeared in the print newsletter LEVERAGE, which is no longer published.

Throughout history, new ideas have been born through informal conversations in cafés, salons, neighborhood pubs, and living rooms. This concise overview of the World Café process highlights its roots, summarizes the theory behind the power of collaborative learning, and provides tips for hosting a café conversation.
Order #LEV33A, PDF article, $6.00