I was looking through some of my entries on this site and noticed how often I use the word “curious” and its variants. Some of the people who know me well may say that I am simply nosey. This may be true. But, in my defence, I would say that the world is an interesting place and that there is much to be curious about.
Doing a quick search for “curiosity” on my machine, I rediscovered the results of an on-line test I had totally forgotten about. (Apologies: I can’t remember where I did this, only that it was something I looked at in January 2003). It seemed pretty accurate to me:
Richard’s Key Strengths
1 Creativity, ingenuity, and originality
Thinking of new ways to do things is a crucial part of who you are. You are never content with doing something the conventional way if a better way is possible.
2 Curiosity and interest in the world
You are curious about everything. You are always asking questions, and you find all subjects and topics fascinating. You like exploration and discovery.
3 Capacity to love and be loved
You value close relations with others, in particular those in which sharing and caring are reciprocated. The people to whom you feel most close are the same people who feel most close to you.
4 Love of learning
You love learning new things, whether in a class or on your own. You have always loved school, reading, and museums-anywhere and everywhere there is an opportunity to learn.
5 Appreciation of beauty and excellence
You notice and appreciate beauty, excellence, and/or skilled performance in all domains of life, from nature to art to mathematics to science to everyday experience.
The only tiny disagreement I have with this analysis is that I have never been so keen in learning in formal contexts like school or class. Apart from that it seemed spot on.
The other thing I found in my search was a “think” piece I wrote back in 2002, “Managing Creativity”, which could equally well have been called “The Six Cs of Creativity”. The section on curiosity read:
4 Curiosity
The implied questions ‘why?’ and ‘why not?’ underlie all creative activity.
The ‘why?’ is a questioning of how things are. The ‘why not?’ is a questioning of how things might be. Both carry the idea of the world as a dynamic field of possibilities rather than something fixed or static.
Cultivating curiosity, by encouraging the hunger for new experiences and new ideas and by provoking deep questions and different frames of reference is at the heart of successfully managing the creative process.
“Powerful and effective ideas are unlikely to emerge from isolating creativity on a pedestal. Instead, managers must learn to immerse themselves in their companies’ actual circumstances…. Creative thinking will arise naturally from a visceral sense of the state of things and from early intimations of new openings and opportunities – awareness acquired by an unbounded and active engagement with the environment.”
RegisMcKenna, “Real Time: Preparing for the Age of the Never Satisfied Customer”, Harvard Business School Press, 1997, pp147
“What do you consider to be the major reason for your early and continuing success? Answer, without hesitation: an immense curiosity to know what is going on elsewhere.”
Raymond Loewy, “Industrial Design”, “Royal Designers on design: a selection of the annual addresses given by Royal Designers for Industry at the Royal Society for Arts,1954-84” The Design Council,1986, pp174
“An emeritus professor of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cyril Stanley Smith, points out that historically, necessity has not been the mother of invention; rather, necessity opportunistically picks up invention and improvises improvements on it and new use for it, but the roots of invention are to be found else where in motives like curiosity and especially, Smith noted, ‘esthetic curiosity”
Jane Jacobs, “Cities and the Wealth of Nations: Principles of Economic Life”, 1986, pp222