What We Can Learn about Curiosity & Creativity from the Newest Nobel Prize Winner

Jennifer Doudna earned the Nobel Prize in Chemistry this week. I wrote about her last year in my book on creativity. Here's the excerpt:

Jennifer Doudna moved to Hawaii’s Big Island at the age of seven. She describes this time in her life as a “big adventure.”[i] As a young girl, she treasured the opportunity to tackle a challenging problem or search for the answers to intriguing questions.  Her father, a literature professor, enjoyed solving puzzles published in the local newspaper each week.  For instance, he loved to decipher famous quotes printed in code.  Jennifer often worked alongside him, trying to unlock the hidden messages.  She says, “It really taught me about the joy of finding things out.”[ii] 

 At the age of twelve, Doudna and her friend, Lisa Twigg-Smith, often explored the beautiful natural environment near their homes.  Her classmate recalls, “We’d follow wild-pig trails, or else we’d just look at things – at mosses that were in bloom, or mushrooms.”[iii]  Doudna became intrigued by the sleeping grass, known as hila-hila, which she discovered one day on a hike through the meadows. The leaves of this plant folded up when she touched them. Doudna says, “I’d look at that and think: Now how does that work?”[iv]  She became enthralled by these types of mysteries in the world around her. 

Doudna’s father nurtured her intellectual curiosity at every turn.  He loved to learn new things, and he shared that passion with his daughter.  He filled the house with books. She recalls the joy of being “the first person to know something. That, somehow, inherently was attractive to me.”[v]  In high school, Doudna enrolled in a chemistry class taught by Ms. Wong.  She says that this inspiring teacher “taught kids about the joy of having a question about how does something work and setting up an experiment to test it.”[vi]  

Doudna went to earn her undergraduate degree in biochemistry at Pomona College and her doctorate at Harvard.  She made her mark initially as an RNA researcher, becoming the first person to map the structure of a ribozyme.  In 2011, she met a geneticist named Emmanuelle Charpentier at a conference. They began to study sequences of RNA called CRISPRs — clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats.  Doudna initially thought of this work as “a pretty small effort in my lab, just a few people having fun checking it out.”[vii]  Intrigued as always by interesting questions, Doudna continued to experiment and learn.  She did not know where this line of “curiosity-driven research” would take her.   Ultimately, they achieved a major breakthrough.   She thought, “Whoa, this could be transformative.”[viii] 

Doudna and her colleagues developed a revolutionary gene-editing tool with widespread potential applications. Scientists can use this tool to discover new drugs and alter cancer cells, and someday it might help them find ways to treat genetic diseases such as cystic fibrosis. In 2015, Time magazine named Doudna and Charpentier two of the one hundred most influential people in the world.[ix]  Many experts speculate that they could win a Nobel Prize someday.  The journey to these extraordinary accomplishments began with a curious seven year-old girl who learned to love a good puzzle and to ask a good question.   

Not every team or organization has a potential Nobel prize winner such as Jennifer Doudna in its midst. However, most groups contain plenty of individuals with natural curiosity and a desire to learn.   Remember that the creative process often begins with a bit of wonder and a thoughtful query.   Ms. Wong and Mr. Doudna did not direct young Jennifer to study particular topics.  They nurtured her curiosity and inquisitiveness.  They provided a supportive environment in which Jennifer’s natural skills and capabilities could flourish.  As a leader, you can and should do the same for your colleagues and team members. 

Building that enabling environment means transforming the mindsets that inhibit creativity – no mean feat, as you may have surmised while reading this book.  That effort will take determination and persistence. Old mental models will not go away easily.  As you dismantle these barriers, do not become frustrated when original ideas do not flourish immediately. Remember that the creative capabilities of people throughout your organization may have lain dormant for quite some time. Individuals often become frustrated, even cynical, over the years when their ingenuity is stifled.  Their work strategy turns defensive in these circumstances: keep my head down, do my job, don’t rock the boat. You may need to light a spark, to reignite their thirst for new knowledge and their desire to develop original solutions to pressing problems. 

As a leader, consider yourself a teacher at heart – no, not the sage on the stage imparting wisdom from on high – not that kind of teacher. Mr. Doudna taught literature, not science, yet he helped a young girl become a brilliant biochemist.  You must cultivate and nourish curiosity and a thirst for new knowledge in your organization, much as extraordinary teachers do in their classrooms.   A spirit of inquisitiveness will fuel the creative process. 

This article is adapted from my book, Unlocking Creativity, published in 2019 by Wiley.

?Images shown above were downloaded from Wikipedia.

[i] https://www.asbmb.org/asbmbtoday/201408/Features/Doudna/  Accessed 2/26/18

[ii] https://cen.acs.org/articles/95/i17/CRISPR-pioneer-Jennifer-Doudna-shares-her-outlook-for-the-groundbreaking-gene-editing-tool.html Accessed 2/26/18

[iii] Jennifer Kahn, “The Crispr Quanduary,” New York Times, November 15, 2015. https://www.nytimes.com/

2015/11/15/magazine/the-crispr-quandary.html Accessed 2/26/18

[iv] Ibid. 

[v] https://www.asbmb.org/asbmbtoday/201408/Features/Doudna/ Accessed 2/26/18

[vi] Ibid.

[vii] Ibid.

[viii] Kahn, 2015.

[ix] https://time.com/collection/2015-time-100/ Accessed 2/26/18