胡迪尼的大象与好奇心

Almost everyone says curiosity is a good thing.

But columnist Andrew Palmer reminds us that it can also make people lose focus.

Palmer usually writes about topics in the workplace and management.

He says the trouble with curiosity is that it is naturally at odds with concentration.

When a person is drawn to a new problem, the decision they should be making often gets pushed back.

As change gets faster and faster, many companies treat curiosity as a kind of superpower.

The reasoning is simple too: only curious people are willing to learn new things, and only they can keep up with change.

Palmer does not deny this; he only reminds us that the other side of the benefit is a cost.

The benefits of curiosity are indeed backed by a great deal of research.

Sophie von Stumm of the University of York took part in a meta-analysis.

She looked at many studies together and found that students with a strong desire to learn get better grades.

Other studies point in the same direction: things you want to learn are remembered more firmly.

In the experiment, participants had to guess how the magician Houdini made an elephant disappear.

Some people were told, your answer is basically right, just a little off.

Others were told, you got it right.

As a result, the first group actually came up with more new tricks.

That phrase "just a little off" made them want to figure it out even more.

Companies also know curiosity is valuable — Google once put up a billboard by the roadside.

The billboard had only a math problem on it, with no company name written.

Whoever was willing to stop and work it out would be led by the answer to a recruitment page.

Charities have used similar psychology too.

When soliciting donations, asking for 8.23 dollars works better than a round 10 dollars.

Spencer Harrison of INSEAD has a way of putting it.

He calls curiosity "productive inefficiency."

It means employees take a detour for an idea that may be useless.

In the short term it looks like waste, but in the long term it may bring returns.

Another experiment shows that curiosity has a lot to do with whether people have a choice.

People who could pick videos themselves were more interested in the content than those who were assigned them.

Since curiosity can be designed, some companies have turned it into a system.

Stefan Thomke of Harvard Business School has studied Booking.com's approach.

This hotel booking website runs about 1,000 controlled tests at the same time.

Each test asks only one small thing: if we change this here, will it be better?

The company is willing to spend this time because experimentation is simply how it does things.

Palmer says that if you want to get the benefits of curiosity, you have to accept the cost.

The cost is time — some work is spent in dead ends where no results can be seen.

For companies used to measuring everything by efficiency, this is the hardest part.

He writes at the end that there is almost nothing bad about curiosity.

And after that comes one more word: almost.