Curiosity: It’s Something we Practice!
We must facilitate curiosity. Use it. Until we are curious naturally, we must ensure that we practice it and use curiosity. Applied curiosity is a discipline. It’s something that’s easy to forget in our everyday evidence-based and reflective thinking processes. What does being curious as part of an innovation process mean? How do you do it?
When we work with problem-solving or innovation processes, where there’s a need to identify new areas of opportunities, we can consciously practice curiosity. There are many ways of working with curiosity in a divergent way of thinking. What is important is that we consciously try to unfold the subject in various directions and look at things constructively. One of the methods is called untangling.
Untangling
As an illustration, let us try to untangle a cupcake. If we look at a cupcake with curious eyes, it comprises many things. There are the ingredients, the various glazes, and decorations, the form they’re baked in, the recipes, the dishes, and cakestands specially made for cupcakes. But it is also the process of baking them.
Baking and decorating them can be a social activity; perhaps they’re being baked for a social event, and finally, it could be that they’re being baked so we can show the final results on Facebook. There are “I would like” cakes and “I shouldn’t eat cake” cakes.
There’s a cupcake trend. There are the logistics, packaging, shipping, foodstuff approvals, and a whole lot more. Different eyes will look at things from different angles. And now we can think about what it is that we’ve created a view of. Ingredients and packaging. Dilemmas and social needs. Production and trends. Much, much more than just a cupcake.
The innovative organization can use curiosity to work with changes and the anchoring of something new.
That you are facilitated through an exercise that turns something you know well on its head is often regarded as something very valuable and exciting. It creates awareness that there are many other solutions to the question you’re working on and many more angles to look at it from. They are the exercises that create the greatest understanding of what innovation really is.
The innovative organization can use curiosity to work with changes and the anchoring of something new. If we turn the process around and refrain from communicating what it is that we want to be anchored, and instead involve our employees, who will help anchor something new in an open and curious process, then we can qualify and develop new solutions that to a greater extent build on the experiences, knowledge, and resources in the organization.
What does the change I am a part of mean? How can I dissect it, understand it, qualify it, and put it together again? How can I add my knowledge and experience to it and place it in the reality that I know, where I am the specialist and where it must function every day?
Curiosity becomes the key to successful anchoring.
One, two, three, curiosity.
There’s only one thing to do: get curiosity rolling! That requires conscious decision and action.
- Use rhetoric: Use the word curiosity to describe positive behavior and ways of thinking. Find invisible solutions and new angles that arise through the conscious use of curiosity. Mention curiosity as a behavior or way of thought that generates value.
- Recognize curiosity: Point out curiosity in the organization. Make it clear that curiosity is a valued ability. Ensure you put into words how the combination of knowledge and a curiosity-driven adaptation of knowledge creates results. Honor curiosity. Hire curiosity.
- Plan curiosity: Put it on the agenda. Create room for curious processes at meetings and workshops and in everyday work. Include methods involving curiosity in work processes.
- Be good at being curious: Train the staff. Learn it. Facilitate curiosity training.
You cannot be Curious if you Think you know the Answer
Curiosity is an inborn motivation
Let’s create the framework for showing the original definition of curiosity: Curiosity is an inborn motivation and urge to examine something closely, accompanied by information-seeking behavior, which results in a better understanding of a given area and gradually diminishes what the unusual in it is. Let us recognize curiosity as the key to innovation and cultivate it as a natural driving force.
This article about CURIOSITY is from the GuruBook edited by Jonathan Løw. We would like to thank Jonathan Løw, the editor of The GuruBookfor kindly letting us publish this chapter: Julie Kjær-Madsen: Curiosity is an Irritating, Underestimated Driving Force. You can find Jonathan Løw both at LinkedIn and at Facebook
Julie Kjær-Madsen (Denmark) is an innovation specialist and owner of the Loop Company. She is also a master practitioner in concept making and business innovation and has previously worked at KOMPAN, LEGO, and Danfoss Universe.