My Thoughts

<user_memory_store></user_memory_store> Title: Curiosity First: Why Asking “What If?” Is the Best Innovation Strategy You’re Not Using Curiosity is quieter than the headline-grabbing strategy plans and it’s often overlooked. But quietly, insistently, it pulls at the threads that eventually unravel whole industries. Think about how many ‘big ideas’ start as a single, persistent question: Why does it have to be done that way? What happens if we try the reverse? Who else is doing this differently? That question — the itch to know — is the very engine of innovation. I’ve worked with teams across Sydney and Melbourne, in start-ups and in long-standing public institutions, and the pattern is the same: curiosity precedes change. Not always glamorous. Often messy. But almost always the origin of something new. Curiosity as the practical engine of inquiry Curiosity isn’t just a feeling; it’s an operational tool. It generates hypotheses, prompts experiments and forces you to confront assumptions you didn’t know you had. When a team values curiosity, it asks better questions, not just more questions. And those better questions create routes out of repetition. Here’s a blunt truth: most organisations confuse busywork with innovation. They commission strategy papers, set targets, and measure compliance. Real novelty — the sort that changes customer behaviour or creates new markets — starts with a stubborn query. Ask a different question and you’ll get different answers. Simple. Radical. Dangerous to the risk-averse. One statistic to anchor this: around 53% of Australian businesses were “innovation-active” in 2018–19, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics. That isn’t a triumphant figure; it’s a reminder that nearly half of our businesses weren’t actively experimenting with new goods, services, processes or organisational structures. Plenty of room to run. Curiosity bridges the known and the unknown Most organisations operate in two modes: execution and exception. Execution is efficient; exception is where you need curiosity. The trick is to create bridges between the disciplined daily work and the exploratory work. Curiosity helps employees navigate that bridge — it’s the cognitive permission slip that says: you don’t know this yet, and that’s okay. Explore. This bridge is also how teams avoid incrementalism. If you only optimise for what exists, you refine the past. If you accept curiosity as a competency, you invite the future in. Suddenly, you’re not just improving—you're reimagining. Historical proof and modern echoes Look at Leonardo da Vinci. He drew flying machines, studied anatomy and sketched machinery in the same notebook. His curiosity wasn’t neat; it was feral. He connected dots across disciplines. That interdisciplinary curiosity is exactly what modern organisations should cultivate — engineers reading poetry, marketers running experiments on product design, HR talking to R&D. Isaac Newton staring at an apple is a cliché for a reason: curiosity seeds discovery. Likewise, modern breakthroughs often begin with someone who refuses to accept the simple answer. Curiosity asks “Why?” where others accept “Because that’s how it’s always been.” Curiosity across disciplines: science, art, tech Curiosity behaves differently in different arenas. In science it’s hypothesis-driven: you wonder, you test, you refine. In art it’s more exploratory; artists probe material and metaphor, and sometimes an accident becomes a movement. In technology curiosity is pragmatic — it asks how a tool can be re-purposed, scaled, or combined. And they feed each other. Technologies born of curiosity in one field become the instruments of exploration in another. Space research spawned materials and techniques that found uses back on Earth. Medical research yields insights that guide social policy. Cross-pollination like that is not a luxury; it’s a multiplier. Why curiosity sometimes loses out If curiosity is so powerful, why don’t organisations lean into it? Several reasons. Short-term pressure. Quarterly KPIs that punish exploration. Leadership that confuses certainty with competence. Fear of the visible failure. All sensible on paper, damaging in practice. There’s also a mistaken belief that curiosity is a personality trait — something fuzzy and unteachable. It isn’t. It’s a practice. It’s a habit you can bake into meetings, recruitment, performance conversations and job design. You can train teams to observe with intent, to frame problems differently, to run controlled experiments. Cultivating curiosity — practical strategies Make curiosity measurable. Yes, I know that makes some people bristle. But you can reward behaviours without criminalising the unpredictable. Look for signals: number of cross-team experiments, time spent on prototype iterations, willingness to share “failed” experiments in a show-and-tell. Celebrate the attempt rather than only the tidy victory. Create slotted time for exploration. Google’s famous 20% time gets quoted endlessly because it worked — not because it was magic. It worked because the company made a tangible space for divergent thinking. You don’t need a slogan; you need a rhythm. Weekly hack days, quarterly “no-powerpoint” sessions, cross-functional shadowing weeks — all practical ways to fertilise curiosity. Rewire hiring and onboarding. Hire people who not only have the technical chops but who are demonstrably curious: they’ve switched careers, started side projects, read widely, asked difficult questions in previous roles. Onboard them in ways that reward inquisitiveness rather than conformity. Teach people to ask better questions. A simple framework helps: What do we assume? What happens if the opposite is true? Who outside our industry has solved a similar problem? That kind of scaffolding turns random curiosity into incisive inquiry. Education and early-stage curiosity Schools still underplay curiosity. Problem-based learning, cross-disciplinary projects, and failure-tolerant assessment produce graduates who can navigate complexity. Australia’s education system has pockets of brilliance; the challenge is scaling that into a culture that sees questions as progress. Teachers who allow students to follow their thread — to pursue projects that matter to them — create future innovators. Slightly anarchic class experiments. A smattering of chaos. Students learning that being wrong in public is survivable. Those are the lessons that matter. Workplaces that encourage exploration Culture trumps policy. You can write a curiosity policy until you’re blue in the face but if team leads punish deviation, nobody will ask the risky questions. Good leaders model curiosity. They show their thinking, disclose uncertainties, ask dumb questions and invite critique. Psychological safety matters. If a software team in Brisbane thinks their idea will be ridiculed in the fortnightly meeting, they won’t bring it. If a product team in Perth knows leadership will sponsor a small experiment, they will. It’s that simple. The role of failure — publicly and privately Some readers will disagree with me here, but I’m unapologetic: failure should be public. Not names-and-shame, but transparent. Share what you tried, what went wrong, what you learned. It normalises the process. People learn faster when failure is documented. That said, not all failure is equal. Reckless failure — with poor governance and opaque intent — is destructive. Managed failure — with clear hypotheses, guardrails, and learning loops — is teaching. Public, structured post-mortems and learning registries turn failure into a knowledge asset. The dark side: curiosity without guardrails Curiosity can be hazardous. Unchecked, it becomes a licence for ethical shortcuts. In research, in tech, in product development — the urge to know can override prudence. That’s why curiosity must pair with responsibility. Ethical foresight should be a mandatory phase in any curiosity-driven project. Ask early: who might be harmed? What are the unintended effects? How will data be used? These aren’t bureaucratic speed bumps; they’re essential risk mitigations. The more transformative the idea, the more rigorous the ethical scrutiny should be. Misguided exploration and how to avoid it Curiosity can scatter attention. When every team chases every shiny idea, resources dissipate. That’s why curiosity needs channels. A focused innovation framework helps: triage ideas, pilot quickly, scale the ones that show promise. Simple governance works. Time-box experiments. Use a common language to evaluate potential: strategic alignment, customer value, technical feasibility, regulatory risk. Curiosity should be the spark; strategy should be the conduit that delivers impact. Two opinions you might not like First: I think creativity metrics are underused. Measure the right things — idea velocity, cross-pollination rate, prototype-to-market conversion — and curiosity becomes actionable. People fear metrics because they imagine tyranny; measured well, metrics inform, they don’t reduce wonder. Second: I openly prefer curiosity over process in some situations. Yes, surprisingly. In early-stage innovation, rigid process kills opportunity. I’ve seen a tiny, curious team with limited governance launch something brilliant. But later, process is essential to scale. So: curiosity first; process second. Not everyone agrees. Some leaders prefer process supremacy. They’re often surprised by how brittle their systems are when the world shifts. How to balance curiosity with responsibility Curiosity and responsibility aren’t opposites. The right balance looks like this: curiosity fuels experiments; governance sets boundaries; ethics frames intent; data informs decisions. When these elements are stitched together, organisations can pursue radical questions without collateral damage. In practice that means cross-disciplinary oversight: legal, ethics, product, and community voices in the room when big questions are asked. It means scenario planning and red-team sessions for innovations that could be disruptive in unintended ways. It means iterative deployment, not a full-bore bet on an untested idea. A quick guideline for leaders - Ask better questions at every meeting. Replace status updates with open curiosities. - Protect time for divergent thinking. Not as an aside — as a scheduled priority. - Reward experimentation regardless of immediate ROI. Track learning as a KPI. - Pair curiosity with ethics and simple governance. No saintly refusal to plan. - Make failure visible — but framed as a learning asset. Education, workplaces and society all have a stake. If we want an Australia that thrives — not just survives — we must prize curiosity in policy, in schools, in the public service and in our private firms. Too often, we praise the final product and forget the question that birthed it. Curiosity is stubborn. It resists neat classification. It will make you uncomfortable. It will ask things that senior leaders don’t want to hear at morning briefings. But it’s the muscle that lets organisations adapt and invent. We — trainers, leaders, educators, policy-makers — can do better. Small, consistent changes in how we recruit, how we assess performance, how we design meetings will yield more curious teams. And curious teams build sustained advantage. So: encourage the questioners. Fund the small experiments. Document the failures. Build the ethical guardrails. Then step back and let curiosity do its slow work. What will you ask tomorrow?