Adopt This Tiny Habit to Turn Your Team Into a Breakthrough Machine

The most valuable asset in any company isn’t a product, a dataset or even a brilliant strategy — it’s the willingness to stay curious. And I don’t mean curiosity as a vague value. I mean structured, operationalized curiosity. The kind that shapes your roadmap, your culture and your edge in the market.

Several years ago, Harvard Business Review published “The Business Case for Curiosity,” citing that curiosity increased creativity and delivered other workplace improvements exponentially. This hasn’t changed. New data from 2025 reinforces the concept, showing that curiosity isn’t just nice to have; it pays off, especially when it’s baked into how a company works.

Execution speed matters, but it’s your ability to explore, test and adjust (curiously) that keeps you sharp. The reality is, you have to constantly reevaluate everything. Technology is moving so fast it’ll drive you crazy: something you spent $2 million on last year might be offered for free from OpenAI this weekend. That’s why staying curious is now simply a survival mechanism.

Related: Are You Asking the Right Questions as a Leader? How Curiosity and Intelligence Gathering Drive Organizational Success

Why founders need to formalize curiosity

The reality is, most teams are too busy executing to experiment. That’s a problem. You can’t learn anything new if your calendar is wall-to-wall delivery. You can’t innovate if there’s no space to ask “what if?”

If you’re a founder, this means one thing: curiosity has to be designed into your company, not just encouraged. It needs airtime. It needs ownership. And it needs to be safe to fail.

Take a page from Google’s old playbook. At one point, they allowed employees to dedicate 20% of their time to side projects. No immediate ROI required. Just space to chase an idea. Some of Google’s biggest products came out of that structure, not in spite of it.

I’ve talked to too many leaders who claim they want bold thinking but punish anything that doesn’t lead directly to ROI. That’s a great way to kill original thought. The companies that learn fast are the ones that treat curiosity like a system, not a slogan.

What structured experimentation looks like

I’m not talking about a strategy that requires a massive budget or an org-wide operational shift. I’m talking about carving out regular time to explore, test, debrief, and tinker. Run short sprints toward innovation, play out “what if” scenarios, and give your team the freedom to build things just to see what happens.

That might look like a “What We Tried” Slack channel. A recurring “disruption hour” on Fridays. A policy where 10% of the time is protected for side projects. Whatever format works, the important thing is to give curiosity a container—and make it safe to experiment without the pressure of instant ROI.

Some companies formalize this even further. A study in the Global Journal of Business Management found that organizations that track curiosity-based KPIs — things like innovation output, employee engagement and efficiency — see measurable business impact. Formal or informal, the point is the same: make space for experimentation, and build feedback loops so those discoveries plug back into the business.

Why curiosity and AI are now inseparable

Right now, the most powerful curiosity lab in your business is AI.

New tools are launching daily, and the companies that win aren’t the ones with the most AI experts — they’re the ones who stay curious enough to try, test, and adapt fast. You don’t need to be a prompt engineer to experiment. You just need a bias toward exploration.

At my own company, we run monthly “AI Days” — no agenda, no pressure, just hands-on time with new tools. Sometimes we build something brilliant. Sometimes we break stuff. Either way, we learn. That’s the point.

AI is a moving target. A tool you ignore today might disrupt your workflow tomorrow. That’s why structured curiosity matters more than ever — it gives your team permission to poke around, push buttons and find breakthroughs early.

But this isn’t just about tech. Curiosity can spark change across the board: a better onboarding flow, a smarter sales play, a new market insight. AI just happens to be today’s fastest-moving arena for that kind of thinking.

Related: 5 Daily Habits Investors Look For in Founders — and How to Build Them

The mindset that moves the needle

The truth is, this does take extra work. You’re probably going to have to carve out time you don’t really have. You might end up doing all your usual stuff plus making room for experimentation. But it’s worth it. This mindset of staying curious, running little experiments, not gripping the wheel too tight is how you get to the big stuff: operational efficiencies, new ways to serve customers, smarter ways to sell.

This is all about getting real wins. The teams that make space for curiosity are the ones who find better ways to work: automating tasks, uncovering new revenue streams and tightening up operations. They’re the ones who spot an insight early and move faster because of it. You want to make a business case? Start by showing how a few hours of structured exploration led to something tangible: more efficiency, a faster launch, a smarter pitch. That’s what gets noticed and compounds success.

Don’t be curious “just because.” When you have a culture of curiosity, you will uncover the clues to solve the real problems. It’s how you will spot something no one else saw. That only happens when you’re in it: playing around, pushing weird buttons, messing with new tools and seeing what happens.

You’re going to have to sacrifice a little bit. But six, nine months from now, that time you protected is going to pay off, big time. You’ve just got to make space for it now.

The most valuable asset in any company isn’t a product, a dataset or even a brilliant strategy — it’s the willingness to stay curious. And I don’t mean curiosity as a vague value. I mean structured, operationalized curiosity. The kind that shapes your roadmap, your culture and your edge in the market.

Several years ago, Harvard Business Review published “The Business Case for Curiosity,” citing that curiosity increased creativity and delivered other workplace improvements exponentially. This hasn’t changed. New data from 2025 reinforces the concept, showing that curiosity isn’t just nice to have; it pays off, especially when it’s baked into how a company works.

Execution speed matters, but it’s your ability to explore, test and adjust (curiously) that keeps you sharp. The reality is, you have to constantly reevaluate everything. Technology is moving so fast it’ll drive you crazy: something you spent $2 million on last year might be offered for free from OpenAI this weekend. That’s why staying curious is now simply a survival mechanism.