What Do Disruptive Entrepreneurs and Children Have In Common?

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When was the last time you asked why? Challenged the status quo or broke one of the norms in your life or work?

If you said today, congratulations! You have successfully revisited your early childhood. As a recent study shows, preschoolers explore and learn more than adults, thanks to insatiable curiosity and a low level of risk aversion.

In other words, young kids tend to dive headfirst into new situations without worrying about the consequences. Adverse outcomes are just part of the deal. Scientific evidence shows that kids between the ages of two and five ask around 40,000 questions.

Of course, this can lead to something called a “learning trap.” As the study’s authors explain: “Exploitation — maximizing immediate reward and avoiding costs — may lead the learner to draw incorrect conclusions, while exploration may lead to better learning but be more costly.”

This is something children realize as they get older. By the time they’re 11, they almost completely stop asking questions for reasons related to nature (neurological, cognitive) and nurture (i.e., how traditional public schools “teach to the test”). By sixth grade, kids begin to understand things in a more adult way. When we try something new and get a result we don’t like, we decide we won’t do that thing again. That’s a sensible and mature response, right?

The downside is we stop exploring. And we gravitate toward narrowing our world down into comfortable, secure patterns. This leads to habituated responses like avoiding confrontation, deferring to others, and sticking with predictable patterns no matter how broken or dated they may be.

That said, quitting isn’t the only way to find happiness in life and work. Often, that learning trap is real, and taking a big risk only provides more proof that the grass isn’t any greener on the other side. I’d add a caveat: it’s especially true if you don’t shift and evolve your mental models. Going blindly into something new just because others are doing it is flat-out lemming behavior.

Then there are those who never give up on curiosity, creativity, and imagination. You know, legendary creators or category-defying inventors over the ages, from Leonardo Da Vinci and…