The entire Seattle office of Current Lifestyle Marketing was curious enough about the topic to attend the taping of Four Peaks’ TV Show with guests Susan Enfield and Greg Bear.

The topic was curiosity and its role in innovation, and for companies that rely on a creative edge (and who doesn’t?), I’m convinced that the curiosity we bring to our work is what will separate creative leaders from the followers.

Curiosity by definition requires us to raise questions – of how things are currently done, what could be better, and what else could we learn to improve. Curiosity will drive us to develop better ideas, rework organizations, and develop better solutions. Every leader willing to lead a change must first be curious about how he or she can improve something worth changing.

While the value of curiosity may sound simple enough, a curious mind might ask a follow up question that’s much harder to answer. How do we foster curiosity amongst our coworkers? It’s one thing for Seattle Schools Superintendent Susan Enfield to say that Seattle wants to foster curiosity amongst 48,000 students. The real question is how to foster it amongst thousands of teachers, or professionals of any stripe.

One answer might be how the classroom setting gives us a permission to try new things, and more importantly, fail at them.

This past year, I was lucky to be able to teach a masters class at the University of Washington on Anyscreen Storytelling. Since I’d never taught before, I took some good advice and did what I knew best – I ran the class like a PR agency.  We had a client, we brainstormed ideas, developed a strategic plan and pitched them like my agency does to its clients every day.

Now because these were students, I also wanted to make sure they could be credible counselors, so we assigned research and presented findings to each other on cutting-edge communications tools. The innate curiosity of the students, and tacit approval of a University setting, allowed me to ask for research and force students to ask hard questions as they developed points of view.

At one point, we explicitly discussed that the students had ‘permission to fail.’ Grades were given, but more important was the act of learning. Students were judged on the thoughtfulness applied to their topic, the questions posed, the research conducted, and the ability to draw conclusions. Any ‘failure’ of an idea could be quickly backtracked from, or lead to a new more successful path of thinking for all of us.

Now I’m thinking about how to take that classroom approach back to work. It is one thing to say it’s ok to fail, and it’s quite another to really mean it. The realities of business are that you can fail if you ship a bad product. You can ask a bad question if it’s one that hurts a client relationship.

But that doesn’t need to be where all our efforts go every day. So, instead of just relying on the experience we gain from our work (invaluable on-the-job training, to be sure), I’ll be looking to create other opportunities to build a University-like feel, a safe haven to allow co-workers to express their curiosity and explore new ideas.

Right now the safe haven I’m picturing feels a lot like a classroom. That might be a good place start.

Brooke Shepard is a member of the Four Peaks leadership and head of the Seattle office of Current Lifestyle Marketing, where he and his colleagues specialize in helping technology companies become lifestyle brands. 

Leigh Canlis of Canlis Glass

Born the daughter of an artist and an attorney, Leigh Canlis is very much a product of the two. With both a business mind and a vision for the arts, Leigh has created new waves in the art world for the past 14 years. In Hawaii, she co-founded Art After Dark, a group connecting young adults with the arts, and led it as President until her departure from the island in 2005. In 2005, Leigh, with her business partner and husband, J.P., opened Canlis Glass in Belltown. The gallery and studio space is dedicated solely to glass art created by J.P. Leigh currently is the President of the business, acts as a private art consultant for Dale Chihuly, is a contributing writer for Seattle Magazine and Spotlight Seattle and continues to serve her community with volunteer efforts.

Adam Brotman, Senior Vice President and GM of Starbucks

Adam Brotman, Senior Vice President and GM, Digital Ventures, leads all Digital Ventures activities for Starbucks and oversees all businesses that are digital in nature, including e-commerce, Wi-Fi, the Starbucks Digital Network and entertainment, as well as the enterprise-wide mobile strategy. Prior to joining Starbucks in April 2009, Adam held several key leadership positions at leading digital media companies, and most recently was CEO of Barefoot Yoga Company, a Seattle-based e-commerce company. He served as Senior Vice President at the digital image licensing and e-commerce company Corbis, and founded PlayNetwork, Inc., a leading provider of in-store digital media and entertainment services for businesses worldwide.

Fifty years ago, we had the Cold War and the Space Age to motivate our innovation.  Today, we’re watching our economy stagnate, even as our region ranks at the bottom of the country in science, technology, engineering and mathematics education.  And that’s despite the rest of the world’s perception of the Pacific Northwest as a hotbed for technology. How can we instill a 21st century “New Frontier” for the next generation?  Is it a matter of inspiration or education? What place should we reserve for the arts and creativity generally?

On October 24th, the Director of the Master of Communication in Digital Media Program, Hanson Hosein will host his UWTV show “Four Peaks” (www.uwtv.org/fourpeaks) at the Science Center to explore these questions.  Join in as our studio audience in this highly participative event.  Together, we’ll consider how we can reinvigorate a region that gave the world Bill Boeing and Bill Gates.

We’ll be shooting the episode “Crossing the Road: How is the pursuit of curiosity vital to innovation in the Pacific Northwest?”  Hanson will interview guests Dr. Susan Enfield the Interim Superintendent for Seattle Public Schools and Greg Bear an award-winning science fiction writer.

General admission tickets are $10.00 please register here: http://crossingtheroad.eventbrite.com/

On top of that, there’ll be a VIP Reception with author, Greg Bear! This intimate pre-event reception starts at 6PM and costs $40.00 (light appetizers and wine served).

Four Peaks TV is a monthly current affairs show that taps into the Pacific Northwest’s rich endowment of idea generators, influential activists, business visionaries and inspired storytellers.  Emmy Award-winning TV journalist and host Hanson Hosein interviews these creative leaders who have made it to the top of their respective “Peaks” of Innovation, Community, Entrepreneurship and Entertainment.  Each program seeks to “extend the reach” of two or more of these notable guests as they discuss a subject of mutual interest, and of mutual concern.  In partnership with the University of Washington’s Master of Communication in Digital Media and recorded before a live audience, Four Peaks is a provocative show that collides the views of our best and brightest. Together, they will reframe our region’s place in the world

“Extend your reach” with Four Peaks and participate as a member of the audience!

Here’s a reel on what we’ve done so far and we hope to inspire you to join us and help us build this network across peaks!

Four Peaks  
Cultivating conversations 

Following the success of the TEDxSeattle event, Hanson Hosein, 42, and Kraig Baker, 43, wanted to find a more participative way to present TED-like ideas. Their solution: a series of small group discussions open to the public but mostly focused on Seattle’s media and tech communities. The goal is to put the Northwest at the forefront of four “peaks”: innovation, entrepreneurship, entertainment and community. Since launching its first event in February—a moderated discussion on innovation and entrepreneurship with former Microsoft exec turned molecular gastronomy cookbook author Nathan Myhrvold—Four Peaks has hosted dialogues on everything from the future of food to new tools for local activism. “TEDx was about exposing people to great ideas; Four Peaks is about ideas, but also connecting people and building infrastructure in the Pacific Northwest,” says Baker. Both say Four Peaks is also about bringing complex topics—such as the role of storytelling in environmental justice, entrepreneurship and innovation—to the broader community. “We look at higher education differently from most people; we see community engagement at the heart of what we do,” Hosein says. “I despise the panel discussion. We don’t want to shower wisdom from on high, we want to have a participatory, collaborative interaction.” He and Baker hope to grow Four Peaks into an event that will compare to Austin’s much-buzzed-about festival, South by Southwest. “Austin and Seattle are both considered second-tier cities,” jokes Hosein. “So why hasn’t such an event happened here?” fourpeaks.org

In a time when technology can facilitate such collective action as the Egyptian protests, do we still need leaders? Yes, says Eric Liu. Such amazing groundswells, he says, can be effective at working against something or at funneling tremendous energy toward a particular purpose, such as the election of President Obama, but they’re not as good at creating structures, planning and execution. “A different form of leadership is required to harness that force,” he says

Liu is an author, educator and civic entrepreneur, in addition to a former speechwriter for Bill Clinton. Liu is also founder of the Guiding Lights Network, a mentoring advocacy organization, and is preparing to hold the Guiding Lights Weekend, a conference that trains 21st century citizen-leaders, on March 25 and 26.

Liu shared his views on leadership and community-building as the guest at the March 6 Media Space TV show and Four Peaks salon, which posed the question “Do we need another Space Needle?” In anticipation of Seattle Center’s 50th anniversary, the salon focused on the topic of inspiring leadership in the Pacific Northwest for the next 50 years. “It’s not about the big iconic physical things we create anymore,” Liu says. “It’s about activating every single person who is in the community.”

In addition to the need to cross-pollinate among leaders, Liu explained the need to foster listening skills. “Listening is 80 percent of great leadership,” Liu says. “Understanding what people are feeling about a topic, not just what they’re saying.” Leadership is driven by your beliefs and your core purpose. And leadership isn’t about grand public actions; it’s the aggregation of a lot of tiny private moments, he says.

Liu is passionate about the factors that come together to create what he calls Seattle’s civic secret sauce. That sauce is due, in part, to Seattle’s “garden” brain. In other cities, the machine – political machines, marketing machines and so on – is the dominant metaphor. But Seattle’s mindset is that of a garden – a wild uncontrollable organic ecosystem that requires gardeners. We are all connected, and we are all in it together. In Seattle, there isn’t a focus on rugged individualism, but rather the belief that “society becomes how you behave,” he says.

Throughout the thoughtful salon discussion, the word “bridge” came up repeatedly, prompting Liu to talk about the importance of bridging social capital. Bonding social capital occurs when birds of a feather flock together; bridging social capital is when people across communities and generational divides can find something to work on together.

One participant pointed out that the “Seattle process” can often involve a lot of discussion and not much action. So, how do we actually get something done? “This is in a lot of ways about growing up,” Liu says. “We need to get past the phase of asking, ‘Are we a global city?’ We are what we are. It’s time to grow up and settle into our body.”

Post written by Amy Rainey.

Hosted by Four Peaks, this salon will focus on learning from two leading storytellers whose work spans film, TV, digital and gaming. Questions will center on how the power of story can create new worlds online and offline, and the opportunity and ramifications this can have for the Pacific Northwest as a center for film and interactive entertainment.

This two-hour forum will also feature a live taping for Media Space TV hosted by Hanson Hosein, Director of the University of Washington’s Master in Digital Communications and Media (MCDM) program, and be followed by a salon-style Q&A.

Four Peaks is a Pacific Northwest network of content creators, technologists, entrepreneurs and community leaders who collaborate on ideas, projects and platforms that support innovation, storytelling, sustainable economies and strong social capital.

At its heart, Four Peaks is a Pacific Northwest creative leadership network.  Content creators, technologists, entrepreneurs and community leaders collaborate on ideas, projects and platforms that support innovation, storytelling, sustainable economies and strong social capital.

Members of the Four Peaks network will convene through a series of monthly Salons and intimate dinners that lead up to a signature full-day Four Peaks Summit in spring 2012. Details are still developing but you can sign up for our email list to stay informed.

Click here to join Four Peaks. Membership is free.

Visit the Events page to see what is coming next.