Curious Minds at Work

Is there a formula for innovation? Yes! And the most successful individuals, teams, and organizations rely on it to achieve their goals. Innovation psychologist, bestselling author, and Founder of the leading innovation firm in Australia, Inventium, Amantha Imber has worked with organizations like Google, Disney, LEGO, and Virgin. In her book, The Innovation Formula: The 14 Science-backed Keys for...

How do we make time for creative work, and how do we sustain it? Amy Whitaker, author of Art Thinking: How to Carve Out Creative Space in a World of Schedules, Budgets, and Bosses, tells us how. Writer, artist, researcher, and teacher, Amy works at the intersection of art and commerce. She holds an MBA from Yale and an MFA from the Slade School of Fine arts. She is also a professor at New York Uni...

Smart machines are coming, so what are we doing about it? Instead of cowering in fear, what if we took a proactive approach? What if there were a playbook we could use to anticipate and thrive in an increasingly automated world? In his book, Only Humans Need Apply: Winners and Losers in the Age of Smart Machines, Thomas Davenport, offers ways to accomplish that goal. His book is a guide for employ...

Multitasking is a myth. And we are poorer for trying to do it. The research shows that we have less productivity, more stress, diminished creativity,  and poorer relationships when we try to do many things at once. And yet, in a hyper-connected world, we can often feel like we have no other choice. And yet, if we honored how are brains are designed, we would see that singletasking is the answer. T...

Can you trust your memory? Probably not. Research shows that we can be convinced fairly easily that we are guilty of a crime we did not commit. We not only misremember information, but we can misremember information about the wrong person. Add to that the fact that when someone else tells us how they remember something, it can alter our memory of that same event, person, or situation. These insigh...

We all share, but today, millions get paid for it. Is this new trend just a fad or is it radical rethink for how we work? When we catch a ride with an Uber driver or contract with someone on Upwork, we marvel at the convenience. What we often overlook is the amount of trust it takes to ride with a stranger or to work with someone we may never meet. Yet that level of trust is what is driving the sh...

Is there a secret to lasting power? Yes, and Dacher Keltner has been teaching leaders about it for decades. And the secret is not the ruthless, manipulative approach associated with 15th-century politician and writer Niccolo Machiavelli. It is actually the opposite. As a University of California, Berkeley, Professor of Psychology, and Founder and Director of the Greater Good Science Center, Dacher...

Average is a myth, so why should it control our lives? We measure ourselves -- and others -- against averages all the time. Think GPAs, personality tests, standardized test results, performance review ratings. These are average measures that tell us little about what makes us unique. And this is not just a feel-good argument. It is a mathematical fact. In his bestselling book, The End of Average:...

Do we shape tech or does it shape us? Turns out it is both. And that is just 1 of the 12 big ideas Kevin Kelly explores in his latest bestseller, The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future. The Inevitable is a playbook to guide us through the seismic changes in life and work, caused by technologies becoming exponentially faster and smarter. Kelly, Co-found...

Are you prepared to live to 100? Research shows that it is becoming the norm, but that few of us are planning for it. Many are surprised to learn that it not only requires rethinking saving and retirement, but also education, jobs, and relationships. To guide us, London Business School Professor and future of work expert, Lynda Gratton, has written The 100-Year Life: Living and Working in an Age o...

More than 99 percent of our decisions are shaped by others. From the clothing we buy to the cars we drive to the political candidates we vote for, our choices are the results of the invisible influence of those around us. And once we recognize that, we start to see our behavior -- and the behavior of others -- in a whole new way. Jonah Berger, marketing professor at the Wharton School of the Unive...

Want to hire, evaluate, and collaborate more effectively? The same design principles that are changing how we think about products and services can improve our talent management. Iris Bohnet, author of What Works and Professor of Behavioral Economics at Harvard University, tells us how. In this interview, Bohnet shares fast and inexpensive ways we can de-bias our organizations. She pinpoints how s...

What if our distractions are robbing us of our individuality? Philosopher-machinist Michael B. Crawford noticed just how much attention we give up -- often against our will -- to all the distractions strategically placed in front of us, from commercials on ATM screens to blaring airport televisions. He has written a guidebook to identifying the sources of lost attention, and he makes suggestions f...

Do you fear becoming obsolete? Liz Wiseman offers a solution. Rather than run from challenging roles, seek them out. In fact, in a world where 85 percent of your knowledge could be irrelevant in as little as 5 years, this strategy may be the key to maintaining and advancing a successful career. Liz is the bestselling author of Rookie Smarts: Why Learning Beats Knowing in the New Game of Work. She...

When it comes to risk, confidence, and stress, who handles them better, men or women? Believe it or not, just asking this question shows we have a lot to learn. Turns out it is not about better, but about different. And while conventional wisdom often has us thinking women are indecisive, risk averse, and fragile, those perceptions are far from what research reveals. In her groundbreaking book, Ho...

If you are searching for your natural talents, think again. Award-winning psychologist, Anders Ericsson, is reshaping our conception of innate ability versus learned skills. Anders has spent decades unearthing the secrets of expertise, and his research shows that the experts sitting at the top of most fields do not have more innate ability than their peers, they have more time spent in guided prac...

We like to think that cheating is limited to criminals and other wrongdoers. But what if it were true that the majority of people cheated most of the time? That is exactly what has been revealed in the extensive research of Dan Ariely, Professor of Psychology and Behavioral Economics at Duke University. Dan has found that not only do most people cheat, but that it is true even of the service provi...

Steve Case, co-founder of America Online, believes that Internet companies have grown in three successive waves. Tech entrepreneurs spent the first wave getting us on the Internet. They spent the second wave connecting us to the apps and platforms they built on top of it. Now, in the third wave, innovative partnerships and policies will help entrepreneurs rethink large parts of our daily life, suc...

While bitcoin and blockchain may sound like something from science fiction, they have become powerful tools to help us rethink banking and finance. What began as a cypherpunk vision has become a viable model of currency and exchange for everyone with access to a Smartphone, from the unbanked in Afghanistan to the urban hipster in New York City. Eager to learn more about where bitcoin and blockchai...

Productivity strategies do not work if we are focused on the wrong things. What we really need is an effective system for determining what is absolutely essential and the discipline to work on that thing. We need criteria that empower us to select our highest priority, and a strategy for eliminating everything else. My guest, Greg McKeown has designed this system, and he has written about it in hi...

We may believe that successful entrepreneurs possess innate abilities that set them apart, but what if those skills are just the result of practice and experience? That is the conclusion of Amy Wilkinson, bestselling author of The Creators Code: The Six Essential Skills of Extraordinary Entrepreneurs. She performed five years of interviews with the founders of organizations such as LinkedIn, eBay,...

Fear of job obsolescence ranks higher for most people than their fear of dying! Only half of workers today believe their skills will be valuable three years from now, and of this group, only a third feels their companies are providing the kinds of training they need to do anything about it. That means the learning is on us, and we need strategies for navigating this strange new world. Karie Willye...

Named one of ten most influential thinkers in the world by MIT, Doug Rushkoff asks some seriously big questions on this episode of Curious Minds. The biggest one is: what if an economy predicated on growth is unsustainable? Growth at companies like General Electric (GE) used to mean jobs for hundreds of thousands of people. That same growth, at companies like Facebook and Google, yields, at most,...

Technology and globalization are reshaping work, but what can we do about it? What approaches should we take as organizations do more with fewer employees? How can we think about our careers as we hold more jobs over the course of our lives, often from different fields? What skills do we need and what mindsets should we hold? Farai Chideya, author of The Episodic Career: How to Thrive at Work in t...

We each have work we were born to do, but it can take time and effort to find it. Becoming comfortable with the search is half the battle, because we need to try different kinds of jobs and work environments. With each experience we gain greater insight into the skills and knowledge we have to share, and we find our perfect blend of work, skills and meaning. In his latest book, Born for This, Chri...