Winter 2005 Creative Wherewithal Georgia Tech scientists are collaborating with European academics to study what fosters creativity among researchers. PDF format

THE GEORGIA INSTITUTE of Technology and two European institutions are joining forces to study what fosters creativity among researchers.

© Duncan Walker courtesy iStockphoto.com Georgia Tech scientists are collaborating with European academics to study what fosters creativity among researchers.

The project, known as Creative Capabilities in Science and Technology (CREA), includes participants from Georgia Tech's Technology Policy and Assessment Center, the Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research in Germany and the Science and Technology Policy Research unit at the University of Sussex in the United Kingdom.

The partners will use expert panels and bibliometrics (quantitative analysis and statistical research methods that describe patterns within a particular field or body of literature) to identify about 60 researchers responsible for recent breakthroughs in genetics and nanoscience. Then CREA will study how these researchers were able to work so effectively.

"Past research, especially in psychology, has looked at individual creativity," explains Philip Shapira, a public policy professor at Georgia Tech who is leading the school's team. "That's obviously important, but we want to understand the environmental and institutional circumstances that lead to highly innovative discoveries. Some of our existing hypotheses relate to organizational flexibility, interdisciplinary activity, strategic vision and environments that tolerate some failures and allow people to recover from them."

Joining Shapira from Georgia Tech will be Juan Rogers, Diana Hicks and Cheryl Leggon, professors of public policy in the Ivan Allen College.

CREA is expected to shed light on: