In our readings we learned about the importance of curiosity for start-up thinking. This is something I agree very much with. Of course, there is also a lot of focus on curiosity in innovation research that supports this view. Often in research curiosity is considered most important in the earlier stages of innovation but I believe it is as important in every single stage.
In fact, I believe curiosity is necessary for a lot of other stuff than innovation. It is a positive to have curiosity in all parts of living life. Research has shown that being curious increases intelligence. I find personally that keeping up a curious nature has improved my enjoyment of life. There are of course many definitions of curiosity. The one I like best is by George Loewenstein the co-founder of the theory of “neuroeconomics”. In his seminal 1994 paper he stated that creativity is “a cognitive induced deprivation that arises from the perception of a gap in knowledge and understanding”. So, like hunger a lack of knowledge of a problem stimulates curiosity. Then when you get a morsel of information this only drives up your hunger for more information until satiation is reached and you move on to different things. I like this theory and find it agrees with my personal outlook.
As curiosity can be taught, I have always found it very strange it in the Icelandic school curriculum it is only mentioned as a subset of creativity but not as a thing of its own. I find this very sad. I believe that for the future it is very important to foster an innovative mindset in our young people. They are the innovators and founders of the future. To do this we need to encourage them to be curious from an early age. In this the school system often fails and in fact in my experiences is much better at stifling curiosity than enabling it. This needs to change and teaching innovative thinking from an early age is one way of doing this.
For my personally curiosity it the main reason I am moving into innovation at this stage in my career. I am curious if I still can be curious. I am curious if I still can think contrarian. I am curious to find out where curiosity can take me.