1) Percy Spencer discovered microwave heating by accident when he noticed a candy bar in his pocket had melted near a magnetron he was working on for radar sets. This led to experimentation and the discovery that magnetrons produced heat, paving the way for microwave ovens. 2) Darshan Patel noticed cracked heels on women in Mumbai and was curious about developing a cream to heal them, leading to the creation of Krack Cream. 3) The document argues that curiosity often precedes innovation, and organizations should focus more on cultivating curious minds through their recruitment and development processes rather than just focusing on innovation.

1. Curiosity Killed the Cat but created a Category
One day in the 1940s when Percy Spencer was working on
building magnetrons for radar sets he realised that the candy
bar in his pocket had melted! Spencer may not have been
the first to notice this phenomenon while working with
radars, but he was the first to investigate it. Why did candy
bars melt when near a magnetron? Spencer experimented
and discovered that the magnetron did in fact have a heating
impact on substances. Thus the microwave oven industry was
born. It was Spencer’s curious mind which led him to the
discovery.
Darshan Patel (of Paras fame) was walking up the steps of
Churchgate station and noticed that the women walking
ahead had cracked heels. Wasn’t there something special
that would heal those painful cracked heels? Cracked heels
had been around for ages but it was Darshanbhai’s curiosity
which led to start working on what was to become Krack
Cream.
In these cases and countless others, it was curiosity that
preceded the innovation. This is true for many cases of new
category creation as well; curiosity is the fore runner to the
innovation process.
Curiously however, it is innovation that is the buzz word
today. Innovation is everywhere. CEOs and marketing heads
lay grand plans to create an innovative organization, and
develop innovative mind sets. Sure, that is very important,

2. but perhaps what they should be doing is developing and
tracking what makes for a curious mind set.
CEOs should be asking – are my brand managers curious
enough? For a corporate it’s easier to put in place an
innovation agenda rather than inculcate and grow a curious
mindset. It is also not easy to pinpoint the quality of curiosity
while hiring people.
They should make the effort because curiosity is the lead
indicator. Innovation is the lag indicator. Any good manager
will tell you it’s the lead indicator which is the important one
to track.
As an aside, the phrase “innovation funnel” is an oxymoron.
Innovation is all about opening up, looking around, freedom
to experiment. Funnel, the word, by its very nature is
restrictive, controlling, reducing. How can the two actually
work together? But we have teams created to manage this
innovation funnel.
To be more innovative, organizations should understand and
find out where they are on the value of curiosity.
Most marketing managers concede that curiosity is
important but is anything being done about it? During the
recruitment process do HR or Marketing try to find out if the
prospective brand manager has a curious mind set? Does the
value of curiosity figure in the recruitment discussion at all?

3. Is the value of curiosity even discussed during reviews by HR
and marketing? After all curiosity is one of the most
important values to possess when organizations are pushing
insights and innovation as pillars of growth.
Steve Jobs wrote in 1996: “A lot of people in our industry
haven’t had very diverse experiences. So they don’t have
enough dots to connect, and they end up with very linear
solutions without a broad perspective on the problem. The
broader one’s understanding of the human experience; the
better design we will have.” That term “broad perspective” is
really the manifestation of curiosity. How does a person
come to have “diverse experiences” and develop a “broad
perspective” in the first place? Curiosity is what leads to him
or her to it.
If organizations are looking to be innovative then they should
also be nurturing the value of curiosity.
Curiosity as a value is already beginning to be researched. In
late 2015 a Harris poll was conducted in the USA to find out
the state of curiosity in organizations and how to foster a
culture of curiosity. You can get a link to the report at the
end of this article.
You know your organization is on the right track when you
see more of open ended research or more resources being
pushed to non-project based research. Does your
organization call itself a listening organization and do people
actually believe that? Is the top gun talking about and doing
something about innovation or is he too caught up in

4. monthly operation reviews? And finally does the recently
promoted marketing manager have a broad perspective on
issues? Is he able to connect a diverse set of dots and make
sense of it?
Einstein said (in the USA in the 1930s) that it is a miracle that
curiosity survives formal education. We have to ask ourselves
whether Indian education is destroying the value of curiosity
altogether. But that’s another story.
State of Curiosity Report:
http://www.multivu.com/players/English/7648551-merck-
kgaa-smarter-together/document/f639a5f0-5583-41d8-
9784-8f407d3010cf.pdf