In an effort to recognize American inventors, business owners, and innovators, President Barack Obama first designated November as National Entrepreneurship Month in 2011. It’s a month to celebrate the innovation and creativity demonstrated by America’s entrepreneurs. Most entrepreneurs begin their journey with an idea. And those ideas generally emerge from a person’s curiosity about the world around them. The late Albert Einstein once wrote, “The important thing is to not stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existence. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery each day.”[1]

The Incalculable Value of Curiosity

We live in a time of great uncertainty. Today’s business environment is often described as brittle, anxious, non-Linear, and incomprehensible (BANI). According to Elizabeth Weingarten, a journalist and applied behavioral scientist, there is no better time to foster one’s curiosity. She explains, “Questions flow from curiosity.”[2] The better the question the better the idea. The better the idea the better the resulting innovations. Weingarten cites two academics — philosophy professor, Perry Zurn, and systems neuroscientist, Dani Bassett — who explain why curiosity is more complex than most people think. They assert, ““For too long — and still too often — curiosity has been oversimplified [typically] reduced to the simple act of raising a hand or voicing a question, especially from behind a desk or a podium. ... Scholars generally boil it down to ‘information-seeking’ behavior or a ‘desire to know.’ But curiosity is more than a feeling and certainly more than an act. And curiosity is always more than a single move or a single question. … [Curiosity works by] linking ideas, facts, perceptions, sensations and data points together.”

That’s also a pretty good description of what an entrepreneur does at the beginning of their journey. It’s no secret that artificial intelligence (AI) is playing a large part in many new ventures around the world. Some people believe that AI is diminishing curiosity’s role in business development since it does most of the thinking. According to Katie Graham Shannon, a global managing partner at Heidrick & Struggles, that’s nonsense. She believes, “The technology leader should help navigate change, ideally as the most curious person in the room.”[3] The human touch remains indispensable to entrepreneurship and its foundational requirements of curiosity and creativity.

Innovation in the Age of AI

Einstein noted, “Innovation is not the product of logical thought, although the result is tied to logical structure.” BioSTL’s Justin Raymundo notes that innovation in today’s world also requires a great deal of collaboration regardless of whether you are entrepreneur just starting out or part of an established enterprise. He calls the “logical structure” identified by Einstein an innovation “ecosystem.” He explains, “At the end of the day, innovation requires a lot of partners working together. The role of a backbone organization is having a vision for how those groups work together and helping create the connections that move ideas into the world.” In fact, the individual who knows how to connect people and ideas is the most important person on the road to entrepreneurial success. Raymundo explains, “The role of ecosystem builders is helping align stakeholders around a shared vision and strategy to address barriers and gaps be it workforce development, physical infrastructure, public policy, commercialization support, or cross-cutting partnerships.”

Those ecosystem builders are generally located in states where connections are more easily made. In the United States, the West has become an innovation hub. Journalist Bruno Venditti reports, “California ranks first by a wide margin, driven by its strength in patents, venture capital, and R&D spending. Six Western states place in the top 10, forming an ‘Innovation Belt’ from the Pacific Coast to the Mountain West. … Their strong performance reflects expanding startup ecosystems, skilled engineering workforces, and close ties between universities and private industry.”[5] He adds, “Innovation shapes where new companies are built, breakthrough technologies emerge, and high-paying jobs are created. Across the U.S., however, that activity is concentrated in a relatively small group of states.”

Alois Zwinggi, President and Chief Executive Officer of the World Economic Forum, believes innovation is being hindered because so much focus is on AI in developed countries. As a result, he claims, “The full potential of innovation is not being harnessed. Public-private partnerships will be the key to unlocking this potential.”[6] He continues, “The next phase of innovation is as much about accelerating the diffusion of emerging technologies as it is about generating new breakthroughs. To accelerate this diffusion, collaboration between government, business, civil society, and academia will be vital to share risks, smooth the path to market, and ensure that technological breakthroughs have a positive impact on societies. … The next phase of innovation will belong to those who use public-private partnerships to bolster their competitive advantage. In an era of profound geopolitical fragmentation, disruption, and mistrust, that advantage is more vital than ever.”

Concluding Thoughts

Zwinggi is optimistic about the future. He writes, “The latest advances in artificial intelligence, quantum computing, and biotechnology have the potential to lift living standards, boost productivity, and drive more sustainable growth.” At the same time, journalist Sabrina Ortiz hopes that AI becomes a tool for creative individuals and not the creator. She writes, “What happens when the driving force that inspires people is artificial? While it is true that AI has been trained on everything published on the internet and can analyze those patterns to generate outputs, it lacks the ability to form an opinion based on lived experience. Rather, it purposefully eliminates randomness and spontaneity, which are the strikes of inspiration and emotion that often make art meaningful.”[7] Ortiz believes, “[If and when] human expression become a synthetic, self-feeding loop, obscuring the beauty of human creativity, [it] would be an incredible loss for humanity.”

While we all hope that the dreams of American entrepreneurs are fulfilled, the truth is that most new enterprises don’t survive. And that’s okay as long as an entrepreneur is resilient. Keith Krach, CEO of Freedom 250, reminds us that failing is part of life and that getting back up makes us stronger. He writes, “From the beginning, the United States was built on a different idea — not just the freedom to succeed, but the freedom to fail, and more importantly, the freedom to try again. That was not a side effect of the system. It was one of its defining features. When the Founders broke from the most powerful empire in the world, success was far from certain. The risk was real. The consequences were permanent. They were not betting on certainty. They were betting on freedom itself. That willingness to act without guarantees became part of the nation’s DNA.”[8] He adds, “Failure was not treated as an endpoint. It became part of the process — a necessary step in building something better. That created a competitive advantage the world still underestimates.”

As we celebrate America’s semiquincentennial anniversary of the formal adoption of the Declaration of Independence by the Continental Congress, we should also celebrate all of the entrepreneurs who make and have made this country both strong and prosperous. National Entrepreneurship Month is a good time to do so.

Footnotes

[1] Albert Einstein, “Old Man’s Advice to Youth: ‘Never Lose a Holy Curiosity’,” Life, 2 May 1955.

[2] Elizabeth Weingarten, “In Uncertain Times, Get Curious,” Behavioral Scientist, 27 April 2025.

[3] Katie Graham Shannon, “Why a Tech Leader Should Be ‘the Most Curious Person in the Room’,” The Wall Street Journal, 8 March 2024.

[4] Justin Raymundo, “Why innovation takes more than a great idea,” St. Louis Magazine, 22 July 2026.

[5] Bruno Venditti, “Mapped: Where Innovation Is Thriving Across America,” Visual Capitalist, 28 July 2026.

[6] Alois Zwinggi, “Public-Private Partnerships Will Define Innovation in the AI Era,” Time, 24 June 2026.

[7] Sabrina Ortiz, “AI should replace the scaffold, not the artist,” The Deep View, 20 August 2026.

[8] Keith Krach, “America’s secret weapon isn’t just innovation — It’s the freedom to fail,” Fortune, 3 July 2026.