A great presentation on the role of creativity in today's world

Kelly posted this on the PGRS MIE Facebook page, so a lot of you have probably seen it, or at least seen the link. I have just watched it and found it very interesting, but also personally challenging. One of Richard’s 4 ‘C’s for the PhD – which all of you who have the privilege of having him as one of your supervisors will have heard – is ‘Creativity’. I feel I have struggled to be creative this year in terms of my PhD. I came with a topic and way to research it which hasn’t actually changed a huge amount. I have often felt unable to ‘think outside the box’, so perhaps this is why I feel challenged. I haven’t worked out the implications of what I have just heard, or how to work it through, but I did jot down this one line from the presentation:

 Creativity needs ‘openness to new ideas, tolerance to ambiguity, mental fluidity and hunger to find the difficult path, hunger to find the new challenges’.

The idea of  ‘tolerance to ambiguity’ has been going round my head recently in relation to my data collection, so maybe that’s where I’ll start …