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The place of curiosity in business

Curiosity is powerful for businesses, being a seed for exploration, imagination and ultimately, innovation and differentiation.

But being curious can also lead to tangents, and time and resources wasted on 'shiny new stuff' that doesn't deliver to strategy or plans. It helps to aim for 'justified curiosity'.

Justified curiosity doesn't mean that you can't go down interesting rabbit-holes, or indulge in left-field thinking. It does mean treating curiosity as a valuable commodity, keeping it within (or at least around) an appropriate context, and being conscious about a drift from return on investment.

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Why curiosity in business is good

Harnessing the discovery, lateral thinking and new connections of curiosity and imagination can help with:

• Innovation and sustaining innovation
• Fleshing out a disruptive strategy in your market
• Getting under the hood of hidden issues with your ways of working and SOPs (Standard Operating Procedures)
• Design - consciously looking at your situation and needs in different ways, and trying new things
• Getting clarity when iterating and explaining the new - hooking new buyers through their curiosity.

How to be curious

Curiosity in business is about having the appropriate space and time to explore "what might be" to uncover root causes or driver, or create new viewpoints, options or solutions.

So justified curiosity needs or benefits from:

• A challenge or problem to solve - seeing things differently, doing something new, understanding the "whys"
• Creating safe places and times to use imagination - encourage people to iterate "try-fail-learn", with simple rules and clear boundaries for how much space and time to use
• Happenstance - Curiosity is best when shared; the magic happens in the intersections between different people & thinking
• Sitting in the moment, and capture the fleeting thoughts and the "wait, what was that you just said"…

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What breaks curiosity

Ideas can be such delicate and fleeting things before they are sufficiently tested and explored to be the basis for innovation. It's a real balancing act. It's oh-so-easy to shut down ideas and curiosity too early. To avoid this, here are some of the things to look for:

• Early close-down, lack of confidence, or self-censure - help people beyond "my idea won't be good enough" or "we've tried stuff like that before"
• Weight of expectation that every idea will win first time - especially if someone is passionate about an idea, there can be a sense that good ideas are a one-shot deal. Help people to understand that the final idea is almost never the same as the original idea - and that's OK. More than OK - it's generational wisdom for the idea
• Black holes vs 'no, but nice thinking' - Zombifying people's ideas by looking like you will progress them, then letting them fall into the black hole of good intentions or easy ways out… Instead, be clear that the idea won't go any further (at the moment anyway), but the thinking behind it was valuable and valued - what have we learned through it?
• Black holes vs 'no, but nice thinking' - Zombifying people's ideas by looking like you will progress them, then letting them fall into the black hole of good intentions or easy ways out… Instead, be clear that the idea won't go any further (at the moment anyway), but the thinking behind it was valuable and valued - what have we learned through it?

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How Applied Wisdom approaches help

Applied Wisdom brings tools, techniques and experience that help you question, analyse and understand your situation options quickly and with clarity. We augment the wisdom already in your team, and bring extra perspectives on:

• Curiosity
• Analysis
• Design
• Innovation
• Quality

Our business & consulting approaches are designed to be iterative and scalable, so they start from half-days, and scale up to various sizes of analysis, design, implementation and transformation projects.

Our work on facilitating curiosity supports every stage of our three phase model, which helps you get clear, get organised, and get outcomes.

If you're wondering, in need of clarity and confidence, or going round in circles, then please get in touch to discuss your 'now, next and options'…

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