Creativity in Research Cultivate Clarity, Be Innovative, and Make Progress in your Research Journey

Creativity is at the heart of successful research, yet researchers are rarely taught how to manage their creative process, and modern academic life is not structured to optimize creativity. Creativity in Research provides concrete guidance on developing creativity for anyone doing or mentoring research. Based on a curriculum developed at Stanford University's Hasso Plattner Institute of Design, this book presents key abilities that underlie creative research practice through a combination of scientific literature on creative confidence, experiential exercises, and guided reflection. By focusing attention on how research happens as well as its outputs, researchers increase their ability to address research challenges and produce the outputs they care about. Simultaneously, they may also transform their emotional relationship with their work, replacing stress and a harsh inner critic with a more open and emotionally empowered attitude.

1. The creativity at the heart of your research; Part I. Develop Your Creative Abilities: 2. Mind your process and be intentional; 3. Use emotions to diagnose problems and move forward; 4. Solve the right problem; 5. Iterate and experiment; Part II. Cultivate Conditions that Support Creativity: 6. Choose your language and stories; 7. Manage your energy; 8. Make your research a team sport; Part III. Bring the Abilities into Your Office or Lab: 9. Integrate the creative abilities, part 1; 10. Integrate the creative abilities, part 2; 11. 30-day creativity-in-research program for individuals or groups; 12. Mentoring creativity; 13. Conclusion.

Nicola Ulibarri is an assistant professor in Urban Planning and Public Policy at University of California, Irvine. Her research investigates the environmental, social, and regulatory dimensions of infrastructure planning and management.
Amanda E. Cravens is a research social scientist for a US federal agency. She cofounded the Research as Design project to adapt design thinking training for researchers with Nicola Ulibarri, Anja Svetina Nabergoj, and Adam Royalty when she realized how much her past experience as a web designer was influencing her scholarship.
Anja Svetina Nabergoj is a lecturer at the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford University, California, where she teaches graduate classes and Executive Education programs. She also works with Fortune 500 companies on building their capacity for innovation.
Sebastian Kernbach is a lecturer, project manager, and researcher at the University of St Gallen, Switzerland, and a visiting fellow at Stanford University, California. He is the founder of the Visual Collaboration Lab (vicola.org) and the Life Design Lab (lifedesignlab.ch) in Switzerland.
Adam Royalty is Lead Design Research Investigator at the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford University, California. He also founded the Columbia Entrepreneurship Design Studio, which amplifies peoples' problem-solving capacity through design.