Curiosity at Work – What Benefits Could It Bring?

How to build curiosity as a measurable, commercial capability

During a recent BBC panel discussion¹ focusing on innovation, Dave Ward, UK and International Managing Director for Amazon Ring, stated,

“If you don't innovate, your competition will”, and “Innovation, it’s a mindset.”

We imagine very few readers would disagree with these statements.

If the need to innovate is so great, why are so few people asking needle-moving questions? This is not just about asking great questions in meetings; it’s about asking questions about processes, about customers, about the way we have always done things.

The World Economic Forum has consistently ranked curiosity, critical thinking, and complex problem-solving among the top skills for the future of work. Yes, AI can process data faster than any human workforce. What it cannot do is decide which questions are worth asking or notice the problem that nobody thought to look for. That is a human capability, but will only bring commercial benefit if organisations build the conditions for curiosity to thrive.

This article explores what curiosity does to our brains, why curiosity may not be apparent in your workplace and suggests ways in which learning and development professionals can encourage curiosity across an organisation.

Curiosity and the brain

When we’re curious, several key brain areas spring into action.

1. The Striatum

The part of the brain that processes reward, the striatum, lights up when we’re curious. Curiosity isn’t just useful, it’s intrinsically rewarding. We don’t only enjoy finding the answer; we get a subtle hit of pleasure from the act of wondering itself.

2. The Hippocampus

Central to memory formation, the hippocampus also becomes more active when we’re curious. This helps explain why we remember things better when we actually care about them. Curiosity doesn’t just make learning more enjoyable; it primes the brain for it, creating the conditions for new knowledge to stick.

3. Prefrontal Cortex

Curiosity also engages the prefrontal cortex, the brain region responsible for higher-order thinking and decision-making. Curiosity isn’t a passive state of idle wondering, it’s active and directed. A cognitive process that pushes us to explore, test, and make sense of what we’re seeing.

4. Dopamine Loop

When we satisfy our curiosity and finally get the answer, the brain releases dopamine, the feel-good chemical linked to motivation and reward. This creates a feedback loop. The more we explore and learn, the better it feels and the more likely we are to keep going.

Curiosity strengthens problem-solving by keeping people thinking for longer rather than jumping to easy answers. It also fuels continuous learning that actually sticks. Curiosity is what keeps organisations adaptable, resilient, and relevant.

Why Curiosity Dies at Work

Analysing 500,000 employee survey responses from nearly 800 organisations, Great Place to Work² identified what they refer to as ‘hidden barriers to innovation'. They call them hidden as they can easily escape leaders’ notice.

Five obstacles to innovation:

1. Everyday angst: When we experience anxiety around asking questions, especially about ingrained ways of doing things, we are less likely to innovate.

2. Purpose gaps: If we cannot connect to our organisation's mission and values, we can easily feel excluded from innovation as well.

3. In constant delivery mode: When we don’t have the resources to do our jobs properly — or are stretched just trying to make things work — curiosity disappears. Innovation needs capacity. If we are operating in survival mode, we don’t have the headspace to explore, question or try something new.

4. Line manager gaps: Frontline managers are central to driving innovation, yet they’re often the most stretched and least supported. Left to carry the load without the space or development they need, they default to delivery over exploration, and curiosity is one of the first things to go.

5. Stagnating minds: Many people do not feel they have the ability to grow professionally, which leads them to feel stuck and blocked from contributing new ideas.

“Great workplaces create a culture of innovation that offers learning opportunities open to all employees and encourages the entire workforce to contribute ideas to improve the performance and success of the company.”

Ted Kitterman, Great Place to Work

We now need to ask: how do we move curiosity from a ‘nice-to-have’ to something we deliberately build into our culture?

Four ways L&D leaders can encourage curiosity

1. Curiosity becomes a measurable competency

If it’s not in your performance frameworks, leadership profiles, or hiring criteria, it stays aspirational. Define what curiosity looks like in practice for your organisation, e.g. challenging assumptions, seeking perspectives beyond your own area, bringing problems with thinking attached, and then assess it like you would any other capability.

2. Rewarding constructive questions

If you only recognise outcomes, you quietly discourage the behaviours that lead to better ones. Curiosity is exploratory by nature and therefore needs space to ask, test, and challenge. Build in simple ways to recognise the quality of questions, not just results.

3. Give curiosity somewhere to live

You don’t need to be Google³ or 3M⁴ to make this work. Even a small amount of protected time for self-directed inquiry sends a clear signal that curiosity matters. It’s not about the time but more about having the encouragement to be curious

4. Train managers to ask, not tell

This is where the biggest impact can be made. A manager who responds with “What do you think?” instead of giving the answer changes the dynamic of the whole team. It builds ownership, thinking, and confidence. Coaching skills, grounded in social neuroscience, are essential for this, as they provide the architecture of a curious organisation.

Turning insight into action

Curiosity at scale can be trained. It will show up in how managers respond, how teams think, and what gets rewarded day to day. If that isn’t happening consistently in your organisation, it’s not a mindset issue, it’s a capability gap you can address.

“Much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on.”

Steve Jobs

First Ascent provides a range of social neuroscience-backed workshops addressing the critical skills your organisation needs by 2030 each of which addresses the need for curiosity in the workplace.

¹ BBC Radio 4. The Bottom Line. Product Innovation: Better, Or Just New?

² The Five Hidden Barriers to Innovation, Great Place to Work

³ Google's "20 percent time" in action, Google official blog. (Google’s “20% time” originates from Larry Page and Sergey Brin’s 2004 IPO founders’ letter, which encouraged employees to spend around 20% of their time on projects beyond their core role. It was positioned as a cultural principle rather than a formal, consistently applied policy.)

⁴ Innovation Management. 3M website. (3M’s “15% rule” encourages employees to spend a portion of their time pursuing self-directed ideas. Established as a long-standing cultural principle rather than a rigid policy, it has been widely credited within the organisation for enabling innovations such as Post-it Notes.)