Skydiving elephants: creativity in research

14 December 2009

By Tennie Videler

Last week I was lucky enough to attend the ‘Creativity in research’ event in London. The event was aimed at postgraduate researchers although I think it would have been applicable to all researchers (and those writing project grants). It was run by Kevin Byron, who kept the energy in the room high with a rapid mix of presented facts and theories and group and individual exercises. We were introduced to lots of different tools to unlock creativity, many of which we already use subconsciously but Kevin argues that being aware of and able to use more will increase the chance of having that brilliant idea.

I liked the idea of widening your interests: The more different ideas there are in your head, the more chance of unique combinations. Browse journals that are completely unrelated to your field. Network with other researchers and meet different people. It is so important to bounce ideas of each other.

Another point that was stressed is the incubation period: often creative ideas (or that Eureka moment- see the series in Times Higher Education) come when away from your work environment.

The skydiving elephant of the title refers to a group exercise we did where some of us were appointed experts in wacky topics: I was an expert in sky diving elephants…. It was quite an eye opener (others were experts in therapy for honey bees and silkworm dentures).

The icing on the cake was our leaving present: the new booklet in the Vitae Researcher series ‘the creative researcher’.