In elementary school, I always wanted to ask questions. Why is the sky blue? Why don't we burn algae instead of coal as fuel? Why do we teach American history more than once, and why aren't the facts completely correct the first time? As many students have experienced, these questions are an unwanted nuisance. It's not necessarily because the teacher doesn't like having a curious student. It's because teachers have limited time to teach until they achieve one outcome: high test scores. As a result, time for questions is set aside. However, what would happen if the next big idea, or even the next best idea, was shelved due to lack of time? This does not benefit the individual, the school or the country in the long term. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original EssayOrganizations function similarly to schools. Organizations have multiple goals and projects to accomplish: raising profits, maintaining public image, creating products and/or services, expanding the company's reach, with limited resources: time, money, human capital. As in school, this type of hasty practice, oriented towards subsequent evaluation, leads to more banal and less innovative results. Curiosity should be explored and encouraged, but how can it be when efficiency is a priority? Could curiosity and efficiency coexist? After looking at business-related websites, I believe the answer is yes. Before exploring how curiosity and efficiency might co-occur, one should first recognize what curiosity and efficiency are. Curiosity is defined by Merriam-Webster as the desire to know and interest that leads to inquiry.[i] Curiosity is the cutting edge of innovation because curiosity leads to creative solutions. Tony Vartanian, co-founder of Lucktastic, for this reason deliberately seeks out qualified and curious employees over qualified but sugar-coated employees.[ii] Curious employees seek out and encounter new questions, which lead to new ideas, new processes, and ultimately , to a more effective and efficient means of production than previous systems. Curiosity is extremely beneficial for both start-ups, which need innovation to stay afloat, and long-established companies, which need innovation to stay competitive. However, curiosity is often ignored by organizational leaders, just as it has been ignored by teachers because the trait is considered childish and inefficient. After all, how do you end a project when the creators keep asking themselves why? To answer this question we must first recognize the characteristic that allows the conclusion: efficiency. Merriam-Webster defines it as the ratio of the useful energy supplied by a dynamical system to the energy supplied to it. Simply put, a highly efficient system is one in which you invest little, but take away a lot. Imagine the fantastic example of placing a grain of corn in a bucket and it transmutes into a bucket of gold; the result is far greater than the sum of its parts and would therefore be considered efficient. Efficiency is valuable because a company, person, product, or process with this characteristic maximizes output, such as profit or quantity made, while minimizing inputs, such as operating costs or time. Asking questions takes time, which can reduce efficiency in the short term. However, innovation driven by curiosity increases efficiency in the long run, which in turn increases profit. Therefore, curiosity and efficiency must coexist in order fora company is successful. The question remains: how? An examination of how to encourage both behaviors separately suggests a solution. Curiosity in the workplace is encouraged through inter-team communication, employees' external hobbies, and increased employee identity and task autonomy. Within an organization, curiosity can be cultivated culturally by accepting and planning for some degree of failure, encouraging questions for the sake of learning, leading by example and hiring curious executive leaders and managers, hiring team players rather than talented individuals, and focusing on the process towards an end result rather than the result itself. In short, curiosity is encouraged when members of an organization welcome, question, and explore all ideas and perspectives. This quote uttered by entertainment innovator Walt Disney in his television show The Wonderful World of Disney explains best why curiosity is valuable: Around here, however, we don't look back for long. We keep moving forward, opening new doors and doing new things, because we're curious... and curiosity continues to lead us down new paths. The quote is also best recognized from a film that embraces failure, Meet the Robinsons. Efficiency benefits from defined processes, clear communication, tasks well matched to employee skills, appropriate incentives and feedback. The merits of this feature are widely recognized in the business world, but highly successful companies appreciate and focus on it. Travis Kalanick, co-founder of Uber, even goes so far as to say that being Uber means being efficient. Uber's efficiency, both for customers and drivers, is one of its trademarks and a measure of the company's success. Using this information on methods to maximize both characteristics, the clear overlap between curiosity and efficiency is time and communication, i.e. both require high levels of clear communication, but curiosity takes time away from a rigid but efficient schedule. To benefit both, organizations would do well to learn how to best communicate with their employees, build multidisciplinary teams that minimize inefficiencies in departmental project transitions and encourage questions about all aspects of the project, and establish a forum to record ideas expressed in both formal and informal meetings so as to avoid repetition of thoughts, erroneous memories and misunderstandings. To alleviate the problem of time overlap, organizations should schedule a time for curiosity. This can take the form of weekly meetings where people air all their questions and make adjustments based on the questions asked or allow employees more time to consider solutions to questions. For the benefit of more introverted team members, this weekly meeting should also have an online written presence that can be edited throughout the week. While this adjustment would take time away from an optimized work schedule and thus could upset current managers and systems, it would enable long-term innovation, saving time and money, and increase efficiency later on. Previously, I have used both WED Enterprises (Disney) and Uber to individually demonstrate curiosity and efficiency. However, both highly successful companies demonstrate curiosity and efficiency. For WED Enterprises, the beginnings were characterized by limited resources: initially there were only Walt Disney and a mouse. He minimized living costs and maximized mouse production. Later, Walt's brother Roy joined the studio.