3 Reasons Why Curiosity Is Essential For The Future - And You Should Care

Let’s start by running a little experiment:

• Ask yourself any question: why is the sky blue? what are those shiny things in the night sky? Why do you get allergies in the Spring?
• Google your question.
• How many results did you get? – Probably millions.

If you ask the questions that others have asked before, you will most likely get the answers that already exist. And if those questions and answers are already available, then they can be fed into an artificial intelligence computer as a big pile of data.

It will be extremely difficult for humanity to make a difference in the future of work and life just by memorizing facts, ideas or pre-existing questions and answers. When it comes to storing existing data and information, we don’t stand the slightest chance to compete with technology.

So, the question becomes: how are we going to differentiate ourselves from intelligent machines?

Most futurist people and organizations agree that it is by being increasingly better at the things that are uniquely human: collaboration, critical thinking, creativity and imagination, emotional intelligence, empathy, among others.

But I think we need more. There’s got to be something else.

And I am fairly convinced that the most fundamental differentiator between humanity and the herds of robots that will be coming to work and live with us is this: curiosity.

Curiosity isn’t a trait unique to humans. Cats and dogs are curious too, and many other earthlings in beautiful planet Earth. But we have excelled at being curious over any other species that have existed. It’s because our curiosity that we have been able to make the greatest discoveries, innovations and progress. “Why is the sky blue”? asked someone once, and science was created as a result.

The greatest innovators and scientists in our history have been, over any other thing, the most curious people you could find. Yes, they were incredibly smart. But they draw their inspiration, ideas and, perhaps, their intelligence, from the reservoir of their insatiable curiosity and the questions they asked. Even Albert Einstein said "I have no special talent, I am passionately curious".

Why Is Curiosity Important?

1. Curiosity allows us to unveil new knowledge

Every single innovation and discovery started with a question. Being curious and asking questions is the most powerful way to unveil new knowledge and ideas. You can’t start with a hypothesis about something that you haven’t asked yourself before. When you are curious about things and people, you have the opportunity to see something that might be invisible to others. And maybe that “something” becomes the next greatest innovation, discovery, company or solution.

2. Curiosity is a key differentiator

We are in the era of artificial intelligence. It is absolutely impossible for us to compete with machines in the things that they are good at: processing data, connecting existing information, memorizing facts and data, processing transactional, step-by-step, repetitive activities. They are and will always be better than us at those things. But ultimately, machines aren’t capable to envision things and ask themselves questions that haven’t been fed to them. No technology or animals have that capability, and humans do! Don’t try to compete with technology in the things technology is good at. Make yourself more valuable and relevant by being extremely curious, even about mundane things. That’s the key differentiator.

3. Curiosity helps us add new value

How do we measure the amount and quality of the value we add at work? You could say: by how hard you work, by how much you deliver, by the cost-benefit of the ideas you implement, or the ROI or the project you do. I’d say: all that is true. But, right now, the business and professional landscapes are getting much more competitive. More companies and startups are popping up everywhere and more people will be trying to access jobs. A lot of them will compete by trying to squeeze more value out of things that already exist. And my approach to that would be: how do we create new value? Where do we find that new value? In the only place where it exists: in the unknown! Yes, we don’t know! And because we don’t know, we must ask ourselves questions, over and over again. By being curious we could find areas that have escaped from everybody’s sight before. In doing so, we can find areas where we can new value altogether!

Why Should You Care About Curiosity?

We are entering a very "weird" stage in human cultural and mental evolution. We are living in exciting, fascinating, transformative, yet difficult, competitive and complex times.

As technology continues its relentless and exponential forward motion, more and more is going to be demanded from us, humans, both in our personal and professional lives. We are going to be required to create, add and deliver much more value than ever before. If we don’t, we could be equally dead.

It’s fundamental for us to understand that technology will be taking over millions of roles that we have historically occupied at work and life. Machines will be very relevant in the future, more productive, efficient, fast and competitive than we can ever dream to be. But they will be so in areas that were already performed mediocrely by humans. For example, we don’t have much physical strengths, machines do. We can’t store too much data, machines can. Why would we try to outcompete machines in that?

Instead, let’s be much better, way, way, way better, at what we were naturally gifted with: our capacity to envision and imagine wonderful things and making them happen, beginning by being radically curious.

Ask questions. Observe the world.  Be curious.

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About the author:

Enrique Rubio is a Tech and HR Evangelist. He's passionate about Human Resources, People Operations, Technology and Innovation. Enrique is an Electronic Engineer, Fulbright Scholar and Executive Master in Public Administration with a focus on HR. Over the past 15 years Enrique has worked in the HR and tech world. A lot of his research and work revolves around the digitization of the workplace and Human Resources. Enrique currently works as an HR Specialist at the Inter-American Development Bank. He's also the founder of Hacking HR. Enrique is currently building Cotopaxi, an artificial intelligence-based recruitment platform for emerging markets.

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