A Curious Mind by Brian Grazer and Charles Fishman

I thoroughly enjoyed A Curious Mind: The Secret to a Bigger Life by Brian Grazer and Charles Fishman. Brian Grazer has used his curiosity super power to navigate his way through life.  It got him his first job at Warner Brothers. It allowed him to start up a partnership with Ron Howard with Imagine Productions.

Brian has personally arranged curiosity conversations with many interesting people. Some went well, Oprah Winfrey helped him out during a difficult time with his personal life. The meeting with Isaac Asimov went poorly as Brian was not properly prepared and the meeting was abruptly terminated.

Brian advocates curiosity as a management tool. When someone isn't doing work for the company in a way that he would prefer, Brian becomes curious and attempts to learn why.  This approach works better for him than quickly issuing orders to comply.

He also advocates willfully shutting off curiosity when you've done sufficient research and are ready to proceed. At this point the additional information is a distraction from the energy needed to complete the project.  Brian points out a couple of instances where he shut off his curious mind too quickly - It resulted in the green lighting of the box office disappointment - Cry Baby.

He also advocates learning from "no." He was repeatedly rejected by nearly everyone including Ron Howard for his initial treatment of the movie Splash. After the negative reception, he begin to alter the focus of the movie from the mermaid's perspective to the love relationship and the problems it brought to Tom Hank's character.

 

Curiosity is a super power - 3 min. 

A Curious Mind - Brian Grazer - 52 min.

Genius and Curiosity - Brian Grazer and Malcolm Gladwell - 85 min.