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how do innovators think?

Read this morning an article entitled, “How Do Innovators Think?” from the Harvard Business Review.  Since I may never go to school at Harvard, at least I can read their journals.  This one paragraph struck me as important — for business types, pastors, parents, etc:

If you look at 4-year-olds, they are constantly asking questions and wondering how things work. But by the time they are 6 ½ years old they stop asking questions because they quickly learn that teachers value the right answers more than provocative questions. High school students rarely show inquisitiveness. And by the time they’re grown up and are in corporate settings, they have already had the curiosity drummed out of them. 80% of executives spend less than 20% of their time on discovering new ideas. Unless, of course, they work for a company like Apple or Google.

Flash back to the past: During my teenage years, one of the more influential Christian writers in my life was Max Lucado. His books No Wonder They Call Him the Savior and God Came Near helped me to identify with Jesus as a real person and a personal Savior and Lord.

A third influential book was On the Anvil, a smaller book and more focused on general discipleship.  In it was this quote: “The most deadly trick of Satan is not to rob us of answers. It’s to steal our questions.”

Perhaps innovators, spiritually or otherwise, are those who keep asking questions … of God, themselves, and the world.