The Courage of Curiosity | Ron Shlein | TEDxHEC Montréal

Ron Shlein opens with a vivid story from when he was 13 years old: he and his 15-year-old brother filled a classroom with theatrical smoke and handed out mirrors to bounce laser beams around the room during a Sunday science enrichment class. What started as six students quickly attracted a waitlist of over 100, as children from neighboring classrooms pressed their faces against the glass to see what was happening. From this moment, Shlein draws a foundational insight: excitement creates interest, and interest is the true pathway to learning. This experience planted the seed for Mad Science, a program designed not around facts to memorize but around experiences to feel and fall in love with.

Shlein then reflects on how curiosity naturally belongs to children—they explore first and apologize later—but that something changes as people grow up. Expectations, judgment, and fear replace the instinct to dismantle and question the world. He argues that curious kids become curious adults only if society allows it, and laments that curiosity has become something people feel they should outgrow. He connects this to a broader societal concern: Canada's future competitiveness in science and technology depends on nurturing young people's natural curiosity into STEM careers.

To illustrate the stakes, Shlein invokes historical examples of curiosity-driven breakthroughs: Frederick Banting's 1921 discovery of insulin, the creation of the internet, and the development of artificial intelligence. Each began with a question no one else was asking. However, he is careful to distinguish between curiosity as a spark and what actually sustains innovation. He introduces the concept of 'hustle'—curiosity with stamina—as the unseen force that keeps people going when excitement fades and rent still needs to be paid.

Shlein then narrates the entrepreneurial journey of building Mad Science: facing polite institutional resistance, struggling to hire people while still doing trigonometry homework, operating broke and duct-taped together, and eventually receiving help from a law firm, McGill University, and a $3,000 federal government loan. He later franchised into the United States, leaving university and moving to a place with no friends or contacts, driven only by mission. He describes nights of self-doubt surrounded by boxes of science kits, framing that perseverance not as curiosity but as hustle.

He then recounts his role as Canada's first Entrepreneur in Residence in the federal government, appointed because someone trusted him. He found that institutions love the idea of innovation until innovation actually shows up. Despite offering his time for free and meeting with dozens of people, he was met with enthusiastic deflection and no follow-through. This experience led him to another key realization: trust opens doors, but curiosity is what makes you walk through them.

Shlein closes with a direct challenge to the audience—largely students at HEC Montréal. He asks how many have stayed silent in a class or meeting when something didn't make sense, and calls that silence 'where curiosity goes to die.' He argues that leadership is not about having answers but about asking better questions, and that in an age of AI, human advantage lies not in memory or speed but in meaning. He urges the audience to start something before feeling ready, to replace certainty with experimentation, and to follow questions no one else is asking—because the future belongs not to those who know the most, but to those who dare the most.