Why It Matters:

Curiosity isn’t just the first phase of design, it’s the discipline that keeps innovation honest. In higher education, discovery often stops when we feel like we’ve “heard enough.” But when institutions turn curiosity into a continuous practice; returning to listen again, widening who’s in the room, and slowing down just enough to see differently; they uncover patterns that reshape how learning, work, and purpose connect.

Expanding our surface area of insight doesn’t just lead to better solutions. It builds shared understanding, empathy, and ownership across students, faculty, and employers: the foundation for meaningful, lasting change.

Go deeper:

This month, I’ve been onsite across several campuses leading design sprints at the intersection of students preparation for the work inside and outside the classroom, in collaboration with faculty, staff, and employers. Every sprint begins with one core goal: to get curious.

We start with gallery walks that bring hard data to life: dashboards, student quotes, survey results, and institutional reports. These visuals draw participants into discovery, prompting them to get curious about what catches their attention or challenges their assumptions. Then, teams widen their frame through stakeholder interviews: students, employers, faculty, staff. Sometimes it’s 30-minute deep dives; other times, it’s a quick five-minute chat with a student on their way to lunch.

In each conversation, the same pattern emerges: initiate connection, investigate through curiosity, and discover even more questions.

Across this year alone, I’ve helped create the “get curious” conditions for more than 300 interviews across campuses and organizations. But I’ve also noticed something important about the sprint process: while it’s a powerful container for creativity and collaboration, it can unintentionally give people the illusion that discovery has an endpoint.

In a sprint, discovery often feels incomplete. Teams synthesize what they’ve learned from a handful of quick interviews and start defining problem statements. These statements shape the solutions they design and test, which is the whole point of a sprint: momentum over perfection.

But as participants start making meaning, they often feel a tug of uncertainty: Did we talk to enough people? Did we miss something? Would this look different if we’d heard from more faculty, or a commuter student, or a small-business employer?

That tension is healthy. It means curiosity is still alive.

However, when discovery becomes a box to check; when teams move too quickly from understanding to solution; it constrains perspective. And perspective, as I’m reminded again and again, drives perception.

After a stretch of sprint travel through Tempe and Sedona last week, my wife and I made a weekend birthday stop at the Grand Canyon. On the South Rim near the Bright Angel Trailhead, there’s a small interpretive sign that shows a map of the Canyon.

A single shaded section marks the area most visitors actually see. The rest of the Canyon, 277 miles long, stretches far beyond what any of us can experience in a single visit.

Looking at that map, it hit me: this is what discovery feels like.

We might walk the Rim or explore a trail or two, take in the view, and feel like we’ve seen the Grand Canyon. But in truth, we’ve only skimmed a tiny fraction of its depth, complexity, and terrain. The map reminded me of what it’s like to lead teams through design sprints: to help them explore a few viewpoints of a much larger landscape.

It’s easy to mistake familiarity for understanding. But the deeper truth is that meaningful insight comes from expanding the surface area of what we explore.

Getting curious isn’t a one-time step; it’s a rhythm. Each round of discovery opens new layers of understanding. What feels like “the answer” today often becomes a new question tomorrow.

That’s why I’m increasingly viewing discovery not as a phase, but as a practice, one that expands as we widen who we learn from, how we interpret what we hear, and what perspectives we bring into the room.

Just like the many perspectives and viewpoints we gathered from our travels through the Grand Canyon, so too we gain valuable insight through the many lenses and perspectives we pursue, clarify, and deepen by making getting curious a regular practice of discovery, not a single milestone in the process.

Here’s what that looks like in practice:

When I think about the canyon map and the small orange section labeled You Are Here, I can’t help but think about the institutions and teams I work with.

Every campus sits within its own “canyon system” of stakeholders, structures, and stories. What we see from one vantage point may look simple, but zooming out often reveals entirely new layers: policies, incentives, histories, relationships, and beliefs shaping what we think we understand. Perspective drives perception.

When we expand perspective by widening the number of people we listen to and the depth of our inquiry, our perception of the problem changes. That shift doesn’t just make for better design; it builds empathy, alignment, and ownership across the people shaping the student experience.

And when campuses start building discovery into their ongoing rhythms, not as a one-time sprint but as a cultural muscle, they begin to see patterns they couldn’t before: where students get lost, where employers disengage, where faculty feel isolated in change efforts. From there, design becomes less about invention and more about illumination.

Heading into 2026, I’m interested in going deeper into the discovery work itself: helping institutions and ecosystems build richer, adaptive, iterative methods for understanding their own canyon walls. A few of the areas I’m most curious to explore:

Every great view begins with curiosity. The Grand Canyon reminded me that even when we think we’ve seen enough, there’s always more terrain to explore.

If your institution or organization is ready to expand its surface area of insight, to look beyond the familiar rim of what you already know, I’d love to collaborate on your next discovery journey in 2026. Let’s go deeper.

“Insights from the Field” is a regular section sharing quotes from higher ed leaders reacting to the question “What advice would you give to someone driving change in education?”

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