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The late Stanford professor Elliot Eisner echoed Albert Einstein when he said: "Not everything that can be measured matters; and not everything that matters can be measured." In this caution lies a more pointed warning, says the author: when dedicated to the quantity-driven approach of scientific inquiry, we chronically overlook valuable qualitative aspects of our world. Artistic inquiry begins with a person experiencing qualities-then relates, shapes, and creates further qualities to create qualitative forms. Its findings entail personal understandings expressed through stories, prose, speeches, images, compositions, objects, actions and performances. In the end, for those seeking answers to demanding problems, both scientific and artistic are indispensable.

Business leaders from Jack Welch to John Seely Brown are amongst a growing number of leaders advocating the power of storytelling. The author describes the key tenets of storytelling and shows why it is so naturally appealing to the human mind. For instance, because we are highly averse to uncertainty, we tend to embrace simplistic 'cause and effect' relations without questioning them. The problem is, when the story isn't true, such characteristics of stories becomes 'traps'. She provides four ways to escape story- formula infrastructure so that we don't fall into a 'no-exit storytelling trap'.

Mental models-beliefs about causality and what is true-are passed down to each and every one of us through education, work and family life. Some of them seep deep into our core to become an established foundation for our thinking. The author argues that we spend too much of our lives asking finalistic questions -what is right and wrong, what is true? It is time to ask different questions, she says: knowing that truth is an elusive destination, how can we be effective? How can we build ever better models without getting overly attached - even when one seems just right? In the end, she shows that we're stuck with the incomplete mental models we learned through education and experience - unless we keep testing the models we're using and exploring alternatives.

The trouble with our education system isn't that it isn't doing a good job: it's doing a great job, says the author. At a greater rate than ever before, it is churning out people who are good at being 'good students'. But what if good students aren't what the world actually needs? The author argues that in a world that is craving creative solutions, 'modern students' need to do much more than memorize 'right answers': they must become engaged in the act of knowledge creation itself.

What could a family-run pig farm in France have to teach mainstream business folk about profit, market share and shareholder value? As it turns out, plenty. The author describes the 'artisan's approach' to value creation and the three ways that it differs from the traditional growth-obsessed firm. For one, instead of pursuing scale, artisans remain at a fixed size - but they exert control over the whole process, from end to end, achieving 'holism' over scale. In the end, she shows that the engine that keeps artisans running has a good chance of outlasting faster-burning models, and as such, it presents a working alternative worth considering.

The author argues that as a society, we have become fixated on setting and solving single-answer problems. There is nothing inherently wrong with single-answer problems, she says; without being able to frame and answer them, we would never get anything done. The difficulty lies in our preoccupation with the small fragment of the world that they represent. Regardless of a problem's complexity, our fixation with finding an answer causes us to narrow our attention, and in doing so, we often overlook what matters most. She describes two more complex types of problems -- enigmatic problems and open-ended problems -- and shows how adopting three particular mindsets can enable one to develop a more open mind and become a 'possibilian'.

The complex problems we face go by many names, including 'social messes', 'wicked problems' and 'big hairy problems'. As the definitions of 'ends' (where to go) and 'means' (how to get there) become more ambiguous and the number of variables increases, the difficulty of solving such problems intensifies dramatically-a difference not just in scale of problem, but in kind. The author argues that such enigmatic problems comprise features identical to those routinely found in the arts-including uncertainty, ambiguity, complexity, uniqueness and interdependence between ends and means. As a result, she says, complex problems can be treated as opportunities for artistry -- but only if we enter the world of qualitative thought and experience, where judgment and imagination take their place alongside quantitative analysis and deductive reasoning.

We expect to find artistry in the fine arts, but artistry is possible in a wide variety of fields, from sports to management. Artistry can occur whenever both the end result and the means of getting there are open to shaping by the practitioner. For example, like an artist, a corporate strategist has the opportunity to define both where he or she wants to go and how best to get there. The successful results of artistic efforts are the memorable performances, breakthrough products and revolutionary advancements in thinking that display the captivating and special qualities that we associate with artistry. The author defines three elements of a personal knowledge system and how they can lead to artistry. In the end, she argues, if the situations you face are filled with uncertainty, surprises and complexity, working towards artistry is a choice limited only by your appetite for the implications of this choice.