#007 : Curiosity, Companies, and the Seeds of Transformation

All my career I’ve been a problem solver. That’s the role I’ve played in teams and the identity I’ve carried with me. I enjoy it. Over time, I’ve gotten good at breaking problems down into smaller bits, approaching them systematically, and working through them step by step. In a way, problem solving became my craft — a repeatable skill that colleagues came to rely on.

But when I trace it back, maybe that story didn’t begin with work at all. As a kid, I loved puzzles. I would spend hours piecing them together, not because I had to but because I wanted to see how the pieces fit. Looking back, was that the first sign of natural curiosity? Did that small fascination with puzzles grow into the habit of problem solving and analytical thinking that carried into my career? Or was it just one of many sparks that shaped me along the way?

When I first encountered AI, curiosity wasn’t the headline. My earliest experiments were more cautious, almost clinical. I asked a few questions, looked at some research summaries, and wasn’t impressed beyond the novelty. It felt like another tool, and as with most tools, I thought the real work would come from my own systematic approach.

But as the models got better, the relationship shifted. With GPT-4o in particular, I found myself doing something I hadn’t done in years: learning in public, fumbling, asking obvious questions. I began using it as a teacher to guide me through no-code automation. It wasn’t smooth. I would ask for instructions, try to follow them, get stuck, paste screenshots back into the chat, and start over again. Some days the loops felt endless — try, fail, troubleshoot, repeat.

And yet, despite the frustration, there was a sense of wonder that kept me going. I wasn’t learning automation because it was efficient. I was learning because every step, every broken scenario, felt like a new puzzle to unlock. That spark — the curiosity to keep asking, keep poking, keep trying again — became the fuel.

I’ve come to think of curiosity as a muscle. And like any muscle, it doesn’t just appear out of nowhere. It has to be developed. For me, that development looked like trial and error stretched out over weeks. It looked like failed scenarios in Make that didn’t run as expected. It looked like moments where I had to step away entirely, because my head was too clouded to see the problem clearly. But even when I walked away, the problem never really left me. It lingered in the back of my mind while I made coffee or went for a walk. I kept circling back, replaying the steps, thinking of different angles.

That persistence — the inability to fully drop the question — feels like the clearest sign of curiosity at work. It’s not always fun in the moment. Often it feels like frustration. But curiosity transforms frustration into energy. It turns setbacks into “what ifs.” And if you return enough times, you start to realize that curiosity has become part of your wiring.

But here’s the bigger picture. Just last week, I was speaking with someone who told me they hadn’t touched AI yet because they “didn’t know where to start.” That’s not an isolated comment — it echoes the recent Project Nanda report, which found that only 5% of enterprise AI pilots have been truly consequential. The skilling gap is still enormous. Organizations are buying the tools, setting up pilots, and yet adoption stalls.

It makes me wonder: does curiosity play a bigger role than we give it credit for? Is the simple act of starting — opening the model, asking a question, running an experiment — driven by curiosity more than anything else? And if so, how can companies encourage that spark? Maybe curiosity isn’t just a personal trait but the missing link in AI adoption.

I don’t know if curiosity can be formally taught. But I’ve seen in my own work that it can be sparked and strengthened. It can be nurtured through safe environments where people feel free to explore without fear of breaking something. It can be modeled by leaders who celebrate experiments, not just outcomes. And it can be contagious — once someone around you begins tinkering, it’s easier to give yourself permission to do the same.

So I leave you with the question I’m sitting with myself: is curiosity the real antidote to stalled AI adoption? Can it be the bridge between “I don’t know where to start” and real transformation?

Because without curiosity, learning stalls. With it, everything becomes possible.