Visual cue: Meerkat
Innovation Behavior #4: Curiosity
Curiosity is about questioning, being inquisitive, and challenging assumptions. When we’re curious, we can expose ourselves to fresh perspectives and original thinking that serve as a stimulus when developing new ideas.
At the core of curiosity is asking “Why?” This helps understand the core of our challenge, so we can come up with the best solutions — we can’t design the right solutions if we’re not focusing on the right problem.
Put Curiosity into Practice
To increase your curiosity…
- Ask questions relentlessly — be okay with being wrong, making mistakes, or not knowing the answer.
- Diversify your interests — try new things, read, and listen to podcasts.
- Don’t assume you know how everything works — dig deeper, listen to other points of view, and see everything as an opportunity to learn.
- Question the status quo — ask why things are done the way they are. Sometimes, it’s simply because it has “always been done that way,” and there’s an opportunity to improve or change it.
Curiosity is used with the following tools: