The Curiosity Deficit: Why Tech Teams Are Getting Smarter but Less Innovative

We’ve never had more access to knowledge. So why do so few of us have time to be curious?

You’d think working in tech means you’re surrounded by curiosity. After all, this is the industry built on questions: What if we automated this? Could this scale? What happens if we plug that into this?

And yet, curiosity is quietly fading from daily work.

According to our April 2025 report, a staggering 93 percent of tech professionals agree that curiosity is “very” or “extremely” important. But nearly half (47 percent) say they struggle to find the time to explore new tools, processes, or ideas.  In the report, tech professionals also cite difficulty identifying which ideas are worth pursuing, fear of wasting time on dead ends, and limited opportunities to experiment in their roles.

It’s not a lack of interest that stifles curiosity.  It’s a minefield of practical friction that slowly grinds down even the most curious minds. That’s a culture issue. And it’s a threat to innovation.

The Paradox of Progress

Tech has never moved faster, but we’ve never had less time to wander.  The irony? As you gain experience, get promoted, or grow into leadership roles, your work becomes more about execution and less about exploration. The curiosity that once made you excellent starts to feel…inefficient.

Instead of asking how something could work differently or chasing an unexpected user behavior just because it’s interesting you’re in meetings. You’re shipping. You’re optimizing.

Little by little, your curiosity atrophies.

What That Looks Like

You are not slacking off. You’re still productive. But innovation becomes reactive instead of proactive. Here’s what that slow fade looks like in tech roles (maybe one of these has happened to you):

• You default to proven solutions instead of testing risky ones.
• You dismiss exploratory ideas because they lack a clear business case.
• You automate what you understand instead of investigating what you don’t.
• You’re learning on demand, not learning out of interest.

None of this makes you a bad engineer, product manager, analyst, or leader. It just makes you normal in an environment that increasingly penalizes “normal”

Why Curiosity Is the Real Differentiator in Tech

As AI accelerates, the value of your role will be far more than your ability to know things.  It will be your ability to question them, combine them, or reinvent in ways no one (and no machine) has considered.

A curious developer isn’t learning the latest tool while asking what is missing. A curious product lead is building what users say they want but also thinking through what they’re not saying. A curious CTO understands trends while challenging them early and often.

In high-performing teams, curiosity:

• Surfaces unexpected use cases
• Detects blind spots before they become outages
• Generates better questions—not just faster answers

It’s the muscle behind true innovation—and it’s underdeveloped in too many tech organizations.

So, How Do You Build It Back?

You don’t need to overhaul your calendar or install a reading nook. You need small, sustainable ways to put curiosity back into your day.  In my courses at Northeastern, I have students spend time going down Wikipedia rabbit holes (just for the fun of it) and asking 2 more questions in any conversation to reconnect with their curiosity.    In your workplace, you could try these:

Block “unproductive” time once a week — Explore a tool, framework, or concept outside your usual orbit—no agenda, no outcome required.

Reward questions, not just answers – As a leader, in retros or team check-ins, spotlight someone who asked a great question, not just the one who closed a ticket.

Create idea parking lots — Let teams surface strange, unscoped, or impractical ideas without pressure to execute them now. Exploration often leads to your next viable feature.

Model curiosity from the top If you’re a senior leader, make your own exploration visible. “I’ve been wondering…” should be a regular part of your vocabulary.

You should also praise certain behaviors, like data scientist blocking 15 minutes to poke around in anomalies they weren’t assigned or a QA lead going deep into a user-reported edge case, just to understand how the system actually works.  Explorations like these should be valued from the top.  Not every question will lead to a breakthrough, not asking them guarantees stagnation.

The Takeaway

If curiosity is so critical, why do so few teams prioritize it?  Because curiosity feels inefficient. It doesn’t slot easily into a sprint. It rarely maps neatly to KPIs. And it almost never shows up on a quarterly roadmap.

But it’s the difference between tech teams that evolve and tech teams that chase the curve.

Want to help your team rebuild their curiosity and the other soft skills that keep them agile, relevant, and future-proof? Connect with Skiilify today.

Click here to download the report: AI Won’t Replace You, But Lack of Soft Skills Might: What Every Tech Leader Needs to Know and watch the companion webinar here.