I think I was 11 or 12 when I sent my first letter to a local TV station to ask them if I can come in one day and see the studios and how they make live shows. To my surprise, they replied and invited me the following Saturday. I was dying of excitement and curiosity – all those secrets were about to be revealed. The same happened when I wrote to a local radio station a few months later. Radio fired up my imagination even more and I wanted to know how all that magic happened. I loved it, even though some of things I had imagined as magical turned out to be mundane tasks.
My curiosity landed me my first proper radio job a few years later when I was at uni. (And the journalist who invited me to see the radio station a few years earlier became one of my colleagues.) And now, looking back, I realise most of what I’ve achieved either professionally – from being a journalist to creating films for clients – or privately, was to some extent driven by curiosity, which in turn created opportunities for me.
So when I met Ian Sanders a few months ago for a chat, we realised that we both were driven by curiosity and started wondering what drives others. Particularly people who’ve achieved, discovered or built something that has an impact on others. And that’s how the idea for our new series called Curiosity or Opportunity was born.
This is a side project in which we talk to people who’ve built (or helped others build), created or invented great things – from art to huge businesses – and ask them what has guided them: curiosity or opportunity? Or maybe something else.
We hope that each episode will also allow us to extract some key concepts that have shaped their careers and/or approach to life, concepts that may inspire others to start creating, building and inventing too.
In the first episode American graphic designer, artist, teacher and entrepreneur, James Victore explains why you need to play with ideas, but not without a plan.