How To Overcome Blindspots And Spark Creativity With Curiosity

For innovators and creatives, sometimes your expertise creates blindspots.

The breakthroughs that made you a domain expert can evolve into a hall of mirrors trapping your gaze in an endless loop of sameness. Over time you may find that the same influences you’ve always referenced no longer inspire you. You may start to feel as if you can’t find what’s new; your idea well runs dry.

Looking outside your domain sparks insight.

There are many paths to finding innovation.

Everyone operates differently. Yet, through years of innovation work, I’ve found that by being curious about the world around me, observing and listening, I’m able to find not only new ideas but new paths — new ways of seeing.

When we’re curious about the world around us, everyday common experiences and objects become a lens for seeing new connections.

“Scientists, particularly, are becoming increasingly aware that what anything ‘is’ depends on who looks at what.” — Neil Postman and Charles Weingartner

To oversimplify, we make meaning through the way we use language. The way we see the world is processed through our language.

By taking time to learn new concepts and language from a diverse array of knowledge domains, we imbue our minds with more creative processing tools.

One Person’s Spoon is Another’s Expertise

Looking at everyday things we don’t often pay attention to, we find stories behind almost everything. Taking a more in-depth look at areas we are not experts in allows for growth through curiosity.

Mark Miodownik, professor of material and society at University College London, asked a simple and peculiar question in the first chapter of his book Stuff Matters: “why don’t we taste metal spoons?” He asked this question as a small boy, and as a professor, he answers it with the story of the accidental discovery of stainless steel.

Miodownik shares that before metallurgists and chemists understood the inner structure of steel; everything was created by trial and error. Stainless steel was discovered through trial and success in 1914 by Harry Brearley who was researching gun barrel design for the first world war. He was attempting to find a stronger metal. After he added 12.8% Chromium to steel, it was found to be too weak and discarded. A few weeks later, walking by a pile of rusting scrap metal, one barrel was still shining. Brearley pulled it out of the pile and discovered stainless steel. While not stronger, stainless steel had other properties that made it very useful.

Normally steel and air oxidize which results in what we see as rust. Stainless steel’s distinctive trick is that with the right amount of Chromium added, the Chromium reacts with the air first, resulting in a thin translucent mineral that covers the metal and prevents air from interacting with steel and thus stops rusting. It’s also heat resistant up to 1200˚ C. Its mirror-like quality makes it especially pleasing for a cold metal.

This is why as a boy, Miodownik didn’t taste his metal spoon — the same rust-protective layer also protected his taste buds from steel.

After learning about Miodownik’s domain of expertise, I have more paths to innovation through the concepts of material history and science.

The metal which was relatively simple to me now comes infused with language and imagery of carbon bonds, chromium, mineral coating — previously foreign concepts are now metaphors to explore my own work.

Take Time Away From Noise

Endless inspiration is found by taking time to look, wonder, and inquire about our seemingly simple world.

Seeing common things in inquisitive ways takes time, we must turn down the noise, filter out information bombarding us 24/7 and lift our eyes from our screens and peer at what we think we know. Creativity has a chance when we get off our phones. Research backs this up. (1, 2, 3)

This is good news because we can be curious about everything around us, if you’re an expert in one area then every other field of knowledge is an opportunity for creative insight.

I think our challenge is to craft moments of solitude so we can look at the obvious around us with fresh eyes as we ask curious questions.

Maybe sparking creativity can be as simple as asking questions about seemingly obvious things.

Photo by Chris Barbalis, Marcin Skalij, Caleb Jones