Curiosity and Creativity: Five Crucial Connections for Creative Professions

In our history books and fairy tales, we often depict ideas as arriving like a bolt from the blue. However, this is not how it works in reality. Ideas are the culmination of numerous impressions, lessons learned, meetings, memories, and accumulated knowledge. Our artworks, innovations, and masterpieces result from blending many pre-existing ideas—both our own and those of others. A wider range of experiences and impressions in life enhances our ability to combine them, thereby fostering the creation of new and valuable ideas.

At the same time, there is a challenge in not merely circulating the same knowledge, experiences, opinions, and perceptions. Echo chambers, bias, social bubbles, and a conformist culture are significant obstacles for both organizations and individuals, and they are difficult to overcome.

We need each other, but we also need to be mindful of how we organize ourselves, how we treat one another, and the kinds of cultures we build.

There are many well-developed and effective methods for creative work, design thinking, and innovation. They all share one thing in common: they help us move away from what we know and can do today toward something new and unknown.

Problem-solving can be seen as the core of creativity and involves finding new ideas and original solutions to a defined problem. Another way to view creativity is by distinguishing it from problem-solving. In this perspective, creativity is not based on what an individual or group already knows and can do. Instead, it involves recognizing the limits of one's own and the group's knowledge and values, and questioning the system of rules within which a problem is presented. Here, the focus is on the framework of the problem or finding new approaches to a problem, which can be described as lateral thinking, sometimes expressed as the ability to "think outside the box."

In my experience, it is often not a lack of creativity in a context but a lack of curiosity.

Events, such as creative workshops, are often limited to what the participants already know. In my experience, it is often not a lack of creativity in a context but a lack of curiosity. Here are five connections that everyone in creative professions needs to know:

1. We Are Not as Curious and Creative as We Think We Are

In self-report studies, where individuals assess their own traits through questionnaires or interviews, people often describe themselves as highly curious and highly creative. However, when curiosity and creativity are measured more objectively—curiosity as a trait and creativity as an achievement—a different picture emerges. We are simply not as curious and creative as we think we are. It is possible that we live in an era where these traits and abilities are highly valued, which may be one reason why people tend to overestimate their own abilities. The significant difference between how we perceive ourselves and how we actually are creates a challenge for creative processes. These processes require a kind of humility. Curiosity and creativity are qualities we must work for, engage with, and invest in; they do not come for free.

2. We Need to Be Edge Workers

What is not yet known won't come up to the office, knock, and say: here I am. It has been shown that constantly being in the borderzone between what we know do today and what we do not yet fully understand is the place where new ideas are born. Individuals with high curiosity are willing to spend time and invest energy precisely in this borderzone, at the edges of their knowledge space. They are willing to do the edgework. Long-term residents of this zone have broader experience and can more easily make associations, challenge and question boundaries, and the way things are today, i.e., act creatively. Generally speaking, in the long term, edgework helps us to learn more and develop cognitively, which provides better conditions for various forms of creative work. If many people in an organization have a high level of curiosity and are genuine edgeworkers, it forms a foundation for what can be called a creative environment.

3. The Role of Idea Linking in Creative Processes

We know today that the transition from what we are familiar with towards something new and unknown happens in stages, both in groups and individuals. One idea is used as a springboard for the next, which in turn becomes the springboard for another—this process is called idea linking. When individuals or groups are dominated by known patterns of thinking, creativity does not happen. Idea linking is the mechanism that helps individuals and groups overcome this obstacle. Some elements of previous ideas are carried forward, while others are left behind. Research shows that curiosity is crucial in this process. Without curiosity, there is no linking of ideas and no gradual movement towards the new or unknown. In this way, the quality of the creative workshop and the quality of innovative and unconventional thinking are determined by how and to what extent those involved in the work are curious.

4. Different Types of Curiosity and Their Functions in Creative Processes

The ability to move beyond what we collectively already know and understand places high demands on divergent thinking—that is, the ability to flexibly generate new ideas. This is supported by several types of curiosity: Diverse Curiosity, Specific Curiosity, Curiosity of interest (I-type curiosity) and Joyous Exploration. In contrast, Curiosity of Deprivation (D-type curiosity) does not support these needs. This type of curiosity occurs when the individual experiences a reward by reducing uncertainty and wants to quickly find an answer or close an information gap. However, this type of curiosity has an important role in parts of the creative process sometimes described as convergent—when we need to agree on how to move forward, fine-tuning and refining ideas to make them more focused and relevant. Understanding how different dimensions of curiosity support or hinder various parts of the creative process is particularly crucial for those who professionally lead groups or teams in creative endeavors.

5. Curious Individuals Are More Motivated to Engage in Creative Processes

Researchers in psychology often seek to understand how different psychological phenomena are related, such as how curiosity relates to intelligence and various personality traits. Some research shows that curious individuals are often more creative and open to new experiences. The connection lies in how curiosity drives people to seek new experiences, which in turn fosters creativity. Edward Deci and Richard Ryan's Self-Determination Theory (SDT) has had a major impact on the understanding of motivation. They describe how curiosity acts as a driving force that underpins individuals' engagement in the creative process. Curiosity thus influences creative engagement and motivates us to engage more deeply in creative activities.

We all have a relationship with curiosity, but we do not always reflect on it. We should, because it affects our lives to a very large extent.

A deeper understanding of the relationships between curiosity and creativity is important for anyone working in any creative activity, whether in the arts, design, design thinking, or in an organization that wants to evolve in some way, to create something new.

This is an area that engages me deeply, and I would like to create dialogue on these issues. Today, I'm sitting in a little hut in the forest, near a small lake, watching my son fishing. It's a good place to let my mind wander.