If your goal is innovation, start by nurturing curiosity

Organizations large and small are honing their creative problem-solving skills to address unprecedented challenges. For some, innovation is a necessity for their business to survive. It’s no surprise to see skills related to change management trending on job search sites. It may also not be a surprise to hear that the pressure put on teams to innovate can lead to greater anxiety and fear that instead lowers engagement in creative problem-solving.

Helping team members find unique solutions or deliver on innovation goals starts by encouraging curiosity. The trait drives creative thinking and fuels innovative companies, but how much do we understand it? More importantly, how do we nurture it in ourselves and others?

The science of curiosity

Let’s start by dispelling one particularly annoying myth. Have you ever heard a colleague say that they, or someone on their team, just isn’t a naturally curious person? Well, scientists are proving that to be biologically impossible. Research from the last decade suggests a promising link between the Drd4 gene—a gene that all humans share, not just the Wozniaks among us—and the curiosity trait (novelty-seeking). Scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology saw a significant difference in the exploratory behavior of birds with Drd4.

Psychologists back this up as well, agreeing that all people exhibit curiosity but that anxiety and fear of external responses stifle it. The Drd4 “curiosity” gene is also responsible for creating receptors for the neurotransmitter dopamine which is associated with reward-motivated behavior. We can think of curiosity as the urge that draws us out of our comfort zone and fear as the agent that keeps us within its boundaries and counter to our true (Drd4) nature.

It is clear that all humans naturally exhibit some level of curiosity but to unlock our potential we must do more to overcome the anxiety that prevents exploration, creative thinking, and innovation.

What can be done to nurture curiosity?

1. Collect lots of dots. Creative thinking is fueled by dots — bits of information that can serve as inspiration or be connected to realize new solutions. The key is to expand your world of dots so expose yourself to different sources. Inputs from different industries, resources, and viewpoints or experiences are critical. Einstein, Jobs, and other great innovators cite this practice as a key routine. You may be surprised to discover what just reading a magazine from a different industry can spark.
2. Embrace ambiguity. Increase your ability to see opportunity by practicing being comfortable with ambiguity. Allow the tension that occurs when you recognize a gap in logic or information and avoid jumping to an assumption and instead ponder the possibilities. It will help you build a more flexible mind muscle.
3. Practice questioning. This may seem obvious but it is a critical function for higher-level creative thinking. No one wants to look uninformed so allowing yourself to ask questions can be surprisingly difficult. What are the right questions? How do you elicit the kind of meaty, thought-provoking nuggets to consider and explore? Taking notes from renowned innovators, I’ve defined three territories to jump-start your journey into inquisitiveness:

• Questioning purpose can be used to mine areas that affect an organization’s mission and vision as well as practical subjects such as your product and services.
• Questioning value can unlock new revenue streams, new audiences, new uses or features, and lead to unexpected opportunities for innovation.
• Questioning process can be a great visualization exercise and there is no better place to start than with the systems and processes you engage in every working day. Mapping out a known process can prove to be enlightening and reveal opportunities while visualizing the steps in an unfamiliar scenario forces discovery.

The urgency of this moment is leading companies to invest in ideation tools that mine data to elicit insights or to poach talent with the hope of capturing their innovative spark as their own. I believe that a more sustainable path to innovation is to invest in growing creative thinking skills and building work cultures that support and reward curiosity.

For more ideas on improving creative thinking and building cultures that drive innovation, visit creativethinkinglab.org