Beyond the buzzword

It is a much-misused word, but creativity is still key to success in academia

A while ago, a colleague attended a training event where the participants were asked to brainstorm around ‘creativity’ in relation to research and academic work. Some of the louder voices in the room decreed that ‘creativity’ was a meaningless buzzword and refused to carry out the task. Shaken by this blanket rebuke, the organisers moved on to something else.

Knowing that I had ‘creativity’ in my job title at the time, my colleague asked what I thought about the notion that the word was so all-pervasive—applied as a requirement for everything in university and corporate life—that it had become redundant.