Designing Transformative Experiences

10 ■ Intellectual Challenge

Activating Curiosity and Problem Solving

Life is an unfoldment, and the further we travel the more truth we can comprehend. To understand the things that are at our door is the best preparation for understanding those that lie beyond.

—Hypatia,Greek mathematician, philosopher

But as for me, I am tormented with an everlasting itch for things remote. I love to sail forbidden seas, and land on barbarous coasts.

—Herman Melville,Moby Dick

Intellectual challenges, learning new things about the world and ourselves, and expanding one’s knowledge in the process have consistently emerged in my work as critical experiential variables and indicators for transformative experiences (see figure 15). For many of you, leaders of ...