Knowledge Feeds Curiosity

I have noticed that when the design-driven approach to innovation that we espouse at Stanford fails to unleash a flood of new ideas and fresh energy, the culprit is often a failure to stimulate curiosity on the part of those doing the work.

So I have begun to ponder, what does it take to stimulate curiosity?

I have enjoyed digging into Ian Leslie’s "Curious," as a provocative take on the subject, and will probably post a few more passages in the future. Here’s a couple of portions that struck me, not only in regards to what it takes to stimulate curiosity among prospective innovators, but also among my own children:

“Creativity starts in combination. Scottish enlightenment philosopher David Hume pointed out that there is nothing particularly interesting about the idea of gold or about the idea of a mountain. But a gold mountain? Now you have something. Progressive educationalists like Robinson frame existing knowledge as the enemy of new ideas. But at the most basic level, all of our new ideas are made up of old ones: to imagine a winged horse, you need first to be familiar with the ideas of horses and wings; to create a smartphone, you need to know about computers and phones. The more existing ideas you have in your head, the more varied and richer will be your novel combinations of them, the greater your store of reference points and analogies. A fact is a particular class of idea about the world, and it can be put to work in a lot of different ways.

We romanticize curiosity of children because we love their innocence. But creativity doesn’t happen in a void. Successful innovators and artists effortlessly amass vast stores of knowledge, which they can then draw on effortlessly. Having mastered the rules of their domain, they can concentrate on rewriting them. They mix and remix ideas and themes, making new analogies and spotting unusual patterns, until a creative breakthrough is achieved…

Knowledge loves knowledge. As we’ve seen, new information that can’t find any networks to affix itself slides out of the clutches of working memory within half a minute or so. If you are told for the first time that Thomas Jefferson died on July 4, you’re much more likely to remember that fact if you already know who Jefferson was, the role he played in America’s birth, and the significance of that particular date. The more broad-ranging your general background knowledge, the stickier you are likely to find any new information. The wider your net, the more that gets caught in it.

Start off with a small net, and you’ll always be playing catch-up. Knowledge is subject to what sociologists call a “Matthew Effect,” named after a verse from the Gospel according to Matthew: 'For whosoever hath, to him shall be given, and he shall have more abundance: but whosoever half night, from him shall be taken away even that he hath.' In other words, the knowledge Rich tend to get richer, while the knowledge poor get poorer.”

Click here to subscribe to Paint & Pipette, the weekly digest of these daily posts.