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I read an interesting article on this topic weeks ago where people from the Harvard Business Review and international business school INSEAD tried to explain what makes visionaries like Steve Jobs and Jeff Bezos tick.
To cut it short, the experts (who have spent 20 years of studying global leaders) said that creative people -
...can make connections across seemingly unrelated questions, problems or ideas.
...they ask "what if", "why" and "why not" questions that challenge the status quo.
...closely observe details, particularly of people's behavior.
...experiment.
...are good at networking with smart people who have little in common with them, but from whom they can learn.
Or in one word - inquisitiveness.
But the sad story is inquisitiveness wanes as we grow older. One expert cited that when you're 4 years old, you ask all sorts of questions. By the time you are 6 to 7 years old, you usually stop asking questions because you realize that teachers value right answers more than provocative questions.
By the time you're a grown up and in the corporate setting, curiosity has already drummed out. In fact, stats show that 80% of executives spend less than 20% of their time discovering new ideas. Tsk...tsk...
The moral of the story - we should maintain our childlike curiosity as we grow older and the next time a kid peppers us with questions, encourage his inquisitiveness because we'll never know, he might just be the next Steve Jobs or Warren Buffet. :)
