A Curious Mind (2015) investigates a vital attribute that many of us simply don’t value highly enough: curiosity. These blinks explain the vital importance of curiosity, and outline the ways it can improve your relationships with your employees, customers or loved ones – and even help you conquer your fears.
Brian Grazer has been one of Hollywood’s most successful producers since the 1990s. He has produced films such as Apollo 13 and A Beautiful Mind, which won the Academy Award for Best Picture in 2002.
Charles Fishman is a renowned business journalist, and is the author of The Wal-Mart Effect and The Big Thirst.
Upgrade to Premium now and get unlimited access to the Blinkist library. Read or listen to key insights from the world’s best nonfiction.
Upgrade to PremiumThe Blinkist app gives you the key ideas from a bestselling nonfiction book in just 15 minutes. Available in bitesize text and audio, the app makes it easier than ever to find time to read.
Start free trialGet unlimited access to the most important ideas in business, investing, marketing, psychology, politics, and more. Stay ahead of the curve with recommended reading lists curated by experts.
Start free trialA Curious Mind (2015) investigates a vital attribute that many of us simply don’t value highly enough: curiosity. These blinks explain the vital importance of curiosity, and outline the ways it can improve your relationships with your employees, customers or loved ones – and even help you conquer your fears.
Everyone has heard the saying “knowledge is power.” We all know that knowledge is essential, but what’s the best way to acquire it?
The secret to gaining knowledge is curiosity – the more curious you are, the more information you'll collect. By collecting more information, you’ll be better equipped to react to changing situations, since you'll be able to consider more options. Better still, you might even be able to anticipate changes before they happen.
Sam Walton, the founder of Walmart, understood the central importance of curiosity. He held regular meetings with his top 500 managers every Saturday morning. Each time, he'd ask what they'd seen when visiting Walmart's competitors. He was curious to know every detail about his rivals, in case they had any interesting new ideas.
The knowledge he gained from these meetings allowed him to optimize his stores; Walmart has fairly comfortably held onto its position as the market leader.
Collecting information like this is always important. You never know when you'll need any given piece of information, but you'll be glad to have it when the time comes around.
A good strategy one of the authors uses for obtaining more knowledge is to have curiosity conversations, and he's had many of them over the past few decades. Curiosity conversations don't have a specific purpose, but they've often served him in unexpected ways.
For example, in 1992, he had a conversation with Daryl Gates, the chief of the LAPD at the time, who was notorious for his autocratic style of leadership. He didn't think much about the conversation at the time, but when he was working on a film about J. Edgar Hoover, the first director of the FBI, a few years later, he thought about Daryl Gates; their conversation had given him an insight into the thoughts and behavior of people in powerful positions, and he used Gates as an inspiration.