them become afraid of challenges. They become afraid of not being smart. I have studied thousands of people … and it’s breathtaking how many reject an opportunity to learn.
—Carol Dweck (from Mindset)
Still, my work with thousands of executives and students at all levels of their careers has proved to me that the skills required for trend curation can be learned and practiced. When you learn them, they can inform your own view of the world and power your own future success.
Beyond adopting the growth mindset and having a willingness to learn, there are five core habits that will help you develop your trend-
curation abilities. Let’s explore them by starting with a story of the most famous art collector most people had never heard of—until he passed away a few years ago.
The Unlikely Curator
By 2012, at the ripe old age of 89 years, a retired postal worker had quietly amassed one of the greatest collections of modern art in the world.
Herbert Vogel and his wife, Dorothy, were already legends in the world of art when Herbert passed away. News stories soon after his death told the story of five large moving vans showing up at the Vogel’s rent-controlled, one-bedroom New York apartment to pick up more than 5000 pieces of art. This Vogel Collection, built over decades, would have a permanent home as part of the archives and collection at the National Gallery of Art.
The Vogels always said the only things they did were buy and collect art they loved.
This passion often led them to find new young artists to support before the rest of the world discovered them. The Vogels ultimately became more than collectors. They were tastemakers and their “fabled collection,” as one critic later described it, which included art from hundreds of artists including pop artist Roy Lichtenstein and post-minimalist Richard Tuttle, was the envy of museums around the world.
The same qualities that drive art patrons like the Vogels to follow their instincts and collect beautiful things are the ones that make great curators of any kind.
The Rise Of “Curationism”
Museum curators organize collections into themes that tell stories. Whether they’re quirky like those told in the Mini Bottle Gallery, or an expansive exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the goal of curation is always to take individual items and examples and weave them together into a narrative.
Curators add meaning to isolated beautiful things.
I am inspired by curators—and I am clearly not alone. The business world has turned toward the longtime practice of curation with such growing frequency that even the world of artists and art critics has begun to notice.
In 2014, art critic and writer David Balzer published a book with the brilliant title Curationism (a play on creationism) to explore how “curating took over the art world and everything else.” His book explores the evolution of the curator as the “imparter of value.”
Along the way he shares the valuable caution that this rise in curationism can sometimes inspire a “constant cycle of grasping and display” where we never take the time to understand what all the pieces mean. In other words, curation is only valuable if you follow the act of collecting information with enough moments of “quiet contemplation” to truly understand what you are seeing and collecting.
This combination of collection and contemplation is central to being able to effectively curate ideas and learn to predict the future. To do it, there are five specific habits that I believe can help you use curation to better see what others don’t.
The 5 Habits Of Trend Curators
I realize that calling yourself a “curator” of anything can seem like a stretch. Curator is often a job title applied to someone who has years of expertise in something, and perhaps even limited to certain industries. Yet curators today can come from all different types of backgrounds.
Some focus on art and design while others may look at history or anthropology. Some have professional training and degrees while others are driven by passion like Herbert and Dorothy Vogel. No matter their background, every one of them exhibits the same types of habits that help them to become masters at adding meaning to collected items.
Curation doesn’t require you to be an expert or a researcher or an academic. Learning these five habits will help you put the power of curation to work to help you discover better ideas and use them to develop your own observations about the rapidly accelerating present.
| THE 5 HABITS OF TREND CURATORS |
| BEING CURIOUS – always asking why, investing in learning and improving your knowledge by investigating and asking questions.BEING OBSERVANT – learning to see the small details in stories and life that others may ignore or fail to recognize as significant.BEING FICKLE – moving from one idea to the next without becoming fixated, or overanalyzing each idea in the moment.BEING THOUGHTFUL – taking time to develop a meaningful point of view and considering alternative viewpoints without bias.BEING ELEGANT – seeking beautiful ways to describe ideas that bring together disparate concepts in a simple and understandable way. |
For the past five years I have been sharing and teaching these habits through workshops and classes to business professionals, entrepreneurs and university students. Those experiences have taught me that we all have the aptitude to learn these skills.
To learn how let’s start with the first habit: curiosity.
How to Be Curious
Bjarni Herjulfsson could have been one of the most famous explorers in the history of the world.
Instead, his life has become a cautionary tale about the historic consequences of lacking curiosity. In the year 986, he set off on a voyage from Norway with a crew to find Greenland. Blown off course by a storm, his ship became the first European vessel in recorded history to see North America.
Despite his crew pleading to stop and explore, Herjulfsson refused and guided his ship back on course to eventually find Greenland. Years later, he told this tale to a friend named Leif Eriksson who became inspired, purchased Herjulfsson’s ship and took the journey for himself.
As many of us learned in grade school, Eriksson is now widely remembered as the first European to land in North America—nearly 500 years before Christopher Columbus. Herjulfsson, on the other hand, has been mostly forgotten and his story illustrates one of the most compelling facts about curiosity: it is a prerequisite to discovery.
Being more curious means asking questions about why things work the way they do and embracing unfamiliar situations or topics with a sense of wonder.
Humans are naturally curious. The challenge is to continually find ways to allow yourself to explore your curiosity without it becoming an ongoing distraction.
When noted chef and food pioneer Ferran Adrià was once asked what he likes to have for breakfast, his reply was simple: “I like to eat a different fruit every day of the month.”
Imagine if you were able to do that with ideas.
Part of being curious is wanting to consume stories, ideas and experiences to earn greater knowledge of the world, even if that knowledge doesn’t seem immediately useful.
REAL LIFE ADVICE (3 WAYS TO BE MORE CURIOUS TODAY)
1 Consume “Brainful Media” – Sadly we are surrounded with “brainless media,” including reality shows featuring unlikeable people doing unlikeable things (sometimes on islands, sometimes in our backyards). While often addictively entertaining, brainless media encourages vegetation instead of curiosity. Curiosity is fueled by consuming “brainful media,” such as a short documentary film or inspirational 17-minute talk from TED.com instead.
2 Empathize