Building an innovative-minded culture, requires the collaborative team environment to embrace the lifecycle of the behavioral dynamics, including interactions and impacts.
But how do you nurture a collaborative innovative culture?
“Fostering a collaborative innovative culture requires the establishment of practicing creative breakthrough thinking and engagements to achieve what matters most in an actionable, impactful way. This is built through the art and science of developing curiosity.” Valeh Nazemoff, Executive Owner of Acolyst
The key is to be innocuous with your inquiry and investigate to discover and uncover with the intention of integrity.
Culture remains one of the biggest puzzles for many industries in how they change the game and lead.
At the Acropolis Convention Center in Nice, France, during Acolyst’s Executive Owner, Valeh Nazemoff speaking presentation titled, How to Strengthen Workforce Communication for Digital Adoption, post presentation at the TM Forum’s Digital Transformation World conference asked her for more insight, particularly around the science of breakthrough moments by elevating curiosity.
Curiosity is what leads to creative and innovative thoughts because it is fueled with imagination and possibilities. Researchers and inventors, like Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, Alexander Graham Bell, Wright Brothers and so many others, achieved creative and innovative breakthroughs because of their passionately curious mindset. Albert Einstein is quoted saying, “I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious.”
One of the more recent researched findings published in the Neuron journal titled, The Psychology and Neuroscience of Curiosity, explains what happens in the brain and body when interest is spiked via curious thoughts. In the brain, pleasure and reward sections light up and the section that creates memories, the hippocampus, show increased activities.
Additionally, the dopamine neuron signals are triggered. The mind thus releases dopamine, the hormone that gives you energy by keeping you aware and motivated in the anticipation of a reward. In this case, the anticipated reward is the breakthrough moment.
World-renowned neuroscience researcher, Mark Waldman, refers to it as the “desire-to-acquire-more” instinct. This motivation-and-reward circuit that causes you to seek in exchange of a pleasurable reward (i.e. breakthrough moment), is centered in the nucleus accumbens of the brain. The nucleus accumbens is the area of the brain that releases dopamine that prepares you for action. This hormone releases the feeling of “feeling good” in the body when you are on the path of accomplishing or achieving something.
Passion is what ignites the spark and fuels the fire within curiosity to keep it going. That is why when you are passionate about a subject you are curious about, it triggers an elevated level of curiosity that speeds the drive and overcomes obstacles (…well, you don’t feel overwhelmed by them as much), creating breakthrough moments, or as I like to call them “aha” moments, that are more memorable and meaningful.
