This story is shared as part of an initiative led by the CEOs of Indiana Corporate Partnership (CICP) to highlight entrepreneurship and innovation across Indiana's universities. Learn more about the initiative here.

This article was written by Sarah Aubrey, Senior Manager of Strategic Initiatives at CICP.

The quality of our innovation is limited by the quality of the questions we are willing to ask. 

We love celebrating breakthroughs: the startup that closes a funding round, the research that reaches the marketplace, a manufacturer adopting a new technology, or an innovation that creates entirely new opportunities for an industry. But before any of those milestones happen, someone has to be curious enough to ask a better question. 

After years of working with founders, researchers, investors, corporate leaders, and community builders, I have come to believe that curiosity is not just a personality trait. It is a practice. More importantly, it is an underrated competitive advantage. 

And it can be a competitive advantage for Indiana, too. 
 

Curiosity Is Where Innovation Starts 

Indiana has tremendous assets. We know how to make things. We have world-class research institutions, globally significant companies, and deep expertise across advanced manufacturing and logistics, life sciences, agbiosciences, and technology. 

Maintaining that advantage, however, requires more than being good at what we already do. It requires continually asking: What is changing? What is getting in the way? What aren't we seeing yet? And what could we do differently? 

That is especially critical right now. Artificial intelligence and advanced technologies are fundamentally altering industry operations, workforce demands are shifting, infrastructure requirements are expanding, and new discoveries are creating opportunities that did not exist a decade—or even a year—ago. 

Real curiosity is not performative; it is not about asking random questions to sound thoughtful in a meeting. It is caring enough to keep digging. It is tracing a challenge back to its root until you understand the real job to be done, and it is possessing the humility to discover that the problem you thought you were solving is not actually the problem at all.
 

Listen Before You Solve 

We see this dynamic constantly in entrepreneurship. One of the first questions I ask founders is, "How did you confirm this problem needed solving?" 

Sometimes they have spent months talking with potential customers, observing workflows, and testing underlying assumptions. Other times, they have shared the concept with a spouse, a roommate, or a few close friends who all agreed it was brilliant. 

Friends validate ideas; customers validate businesses. 

Customer discovery is curiosity in action, not a box to check. Who is your ideal customer? What do they actually care about? Why would they change their existing habits? What would have to be true for today to be the right time to buy? Changing behavior is hard, and "new" does not automatically win. Organizations and individuals change only when a solution becomes meaningfully better—faster, easier, less expensive, more reliable, or less frustrating. 

That principle extends far beyond startups. When Conexus Indiana spent time listening directly to manufacturers about technology adoption, for instance, they found that leaders did not need to be convinced that advanced technologies mattered. Instead, they needed practical frameworks to evaluate return on investment, prepare their workforce, and sustain new systems on the shop floor. 

Curiosity moved the strategic inquiry from "How do we convince companies that technology matters?" to "What is actually preventing companies from adopting it?" Better question. Better strategy. 

Curiosity at the Scale of a State 

The same mindset applies to Indiana's economy as a whole. 

CICP and its sector initiatives spend significant time researching Indiana's advanced industries—not simply to publish reports, but to understand what shifts mean for our long-term economic competitiveness: 

  • What skills will Hoosiers need as artificial intelligence reshapes day-to-day work? 
  • Where are the hidden barriers preventing mid-market firms from modernizing? 
  • What physical and digital infrastructure will growing industries require next? 
  • Where does Indiana possess research capabilities that have not yet translated into commercial value? 

Curiosity is the connective tissue running across research, industry networks, workforce development, and startup ecosystems. Indiana holds a distinct geographic and institutional advantage because these assets sit in close proximity. A breakthrough can move from a university lab to an early-stage venture, partner with an established corporation, and scale onto a production line without ever leaving our borders. Our core challenge is to facilitate those connections more intentionally.
 

The Courage to Change Course 

Curiosity also requires the courage to learn something you did not want to hear. 

Founders frequently fall into a feature-trap—building one more dashboard, adding one more clever widget, and equating activity with progress. The harder, more necessary work is putting an imperfect concept in front of users and asking them to point out where it fails. 

Organizations and institutions face the identical hazard. We easily become attached to programs because we have always run them, strategies because we have funded them, or assumptions because they were valid five years ago. Genuine curiosity is not a search for confirmation; it is a search for evidence that helps us build something better, along with the willingness to pivot when the data demands it. 

 

Fall in Love with the Problem 

Curiosity is a muscle that can be systematically trained and practiced across every discipline: 

  • Founders practice it by listening deeply to customer friction. 
  • Researchers practice it by designing discoveries around real-world application. 
  • Manufacturers practice it by challenging legacy processes and testing new tools. 
  • Employers practice it by anticipating future capability gaps rather than past job descriptions. 
  • Investors practice it by looking beyond familiar networks and conventional founder archetypes. 
  • Economic leaders practice it by focusing on what our communities will need next rather than what worked yesterday. 

Indiana's long-term prosperity will not stem from having immediate answers. It will come from our willingness to ask sharper questions, bring diverse problem-solvers together, challenge existing assumptions, and act decisively on what we discover. 

 

Fall in love with the problem, not your solution. The solution can—and often should—change. When we are disciplined curiosity with our state's proven ability to make, build, collaborate, and execute, it becomes one of the most formidable competitive advantages we have.

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Across Indiana, our universities are fostering the next generation of entrepreneurs and innovators who are shaping our state's future. In collaboration with our university partners, CICP is excited to share and amplify those stories; which highlight students, faculty, and alumni who are turning ideas into action. By celebrating these efforts, we aim to strengthen the connections between higher education, industry, and community, and to shine a light on the innovation happening throughout our state. Click here to learn more about this initiative.