Imagine you had the challenge of inventing a better mousetrap. Literally. A typical brainstorm session may yield incremental improvements in the spring on a mousetrap, or the bait, or the construction materials.
The whole essence of igniting your curiosity is to question and challenge everything. Why does a mousetrap need to use a spring at all? What other ways are there to catch a mouse? How could a mouse be contained in a completely different way?
The more radical you allow your curiosity to wonder, the better. “What if we pumped water into the house and filled the entire house in order to flood the mice out?” This type of breakthrough thinking is exactly what you should seek. Of course you would not actually ruin an entire house with water, but perhaps you’d invent a mousetrap that catches mice in a water-based trap. The essence is to push yourself and your team outside of normal boundaries and let your imagination run wild. You can always tame it back later as needed.
Best-selling author and professor of psychology at the University of Chicago Mihalyi Czikszentmihalyi said, “Creativity generally involves crossing the boundaries of domains. The most creative among us see relationships the rest of us never notice.”
True originality has never emerged from a formula. Rules are precisely what innovators and other paradigm shifters break. And to reach these new heights of creativity, let an unbridled sense of curiosity and awareness serve as your building blocks.
The old expression, “Curiosity killed the cat” couldn’t be more useless and out of date. A more appropriate phrase in light of today’s global business climate would be, “A lack of curiosity killed the cat”, or, “Curiosity helped the cat catch the mouse.”
Especially with your new patent-pending, revolutionary, groundbreaking water-based mousetrap.