Curiosity, Creativity & Innovation: What We Can Pass On to Students

Kristijan Musek Lešnik
Nov 9, 2025
3 min read

Updated: Nov 26, 2025

Curiosity fuels creativity and innovation. In classroom, we protect curiosity by asking open-ended questions, welcoming divergent thinking, and teaching critical inquiry—so young people become explorers, not just answer collectors.

“When we protect curiosity, we raise explorers who ask, seek, and invent—because progress, compassion, and joy often begin with one brave question: What if?”

Curiosity, creativity, and innovation have shaped every major step of human progress. They are also the key to our future, as they help young people:

ask better questions,
generate ideas, and
solve real problems with imagination and courage.

Curiosity Is in Our Nature

The desire to explore and understand the world around us is written into our DNA.

Even infants show early signs of curiosity. Every toddler, as soon as they can, begins to explore the world and test their limits. This joy of discovery is a powerful force. It drives children’s learning, thinking, and their sense of wonder.

The Adult’s Role — To Guide, Not Suppress

Adults can either nurture or stifle this natural curiosity. Our job is to keep children safe, yes, but also to allow them to try, fail, and get a little scraped along the way. When we overprotect or control too much, we risk sending an unintended message: that curiosity is inconvenient, or even wrong.

Children thrive when they live among adults who encourage exploration and trust their abilities. By supporting their curiosity, we lay the foundation for later creativity and confidence.

Curiosity Leads to Creativity

Curiosity is the seed of creativity. When curiosity begins to generate new ideas and solutions, creativity and innovation are born. Both flourish — or fade — depending on the environment adults create.

Creativity and innovation don’t thrive in conformity —they grow in classrooms that welcome questions. Schools can actively foster creativity by encouraging curiosity and divergent thinking. On the other hand, rigid systems that reward only “one right answer” and uniform thinking can quickly extinguish it.

Curiosity (questions) → Creativity (ideas) → Innovation (tested solutions). These thrive in environments that reward flexible problem-solving, and multiple valid paths.

The Good and the Not-So-Good News

The good news: every child is born naturally curious. The less good news: today’s omnipresent technology doesn’t always nurture that curiosity — sometimes it dulls it.

Children and teenagers who spend much of their time online may begin to:

Rely on the first answer a search engine or AI provides instead of asking deeper questions.
Settle for short, surface-level information instead of exploring further.
Feel certain in their knowledge without realizing it's shallow (Dunning-Kruger effect).
Be drawn into echo chambers that confirm existing beliefs.
Become passive consumers of information instead of active explorers.

Tech can inspire—but it can also flatten curiosity:

Quick answers replace deeper questions
Skimming beats exploration
Echo chambers reinforce certainty without depth

Classrooms can counter this by teaching source checking, evidence, and why/how/what-if thinking. That’s why our role as educators is so important: to help children keep their curiosity alive in a world that often tries to automate it away.

How to Encourage Curiosity and Creativity in Children

Ask open-ended questions that allow for multiple answers, not just one correct solution.
Encourage out-of-the-box thinking.
Avoid yes-or-no questions — ask why, how, and what if.
Acknowledge and reward curiosity instead of ignoring or punishing it.
Teach them to question online information. Show them how to check sources and think about who created it and why.
Promote critical thinking through discussions and reflection.
Listen to their ideas — even the wild ones.
Support imagination and free play — the birthplace of creativity.
Be a curious teacher. Your own sense of wonder is contagious.

How to Keep Your Own Curiosity Alive

Seek complete, deep information, not instant answers.
Read — a lot.
Choose challenges (books, movies, clubs, activities) that make you think.
Follow what sparks your curiosity.
Make time for your hobbies, play, and daydreaming.
Walk through your town as if seeing it for the first time.
Admit that you don’t know everything — and celebrate learning something new every day.
Step out of routine. Try something new.
Don’t judge people for seeing things differently. Instead, ask why their view might differ from yours.

In the End

Curiosity keeps the mind young. Creativity keeps it alive. When we nurture curiosity, we raise explorers — children and youth who will ask questions, seek meaning, and imagine better ways of doing things.

Why this matters? Because progress, compassion, and even joy usually begin the same way — with someone daring to ask: “What if?”