Module Information

This module will provide a basis for reflection, research and practice on each of these areas, and also introduce these concepts as increasingly important areas of research and application:
(i) For individuals a reflection on these problems and ways of thinking can benefit personal growth and improved work contributions.
(ii) For researchers creativity, inspiration, development of new theories, approaches, and solutions.
(iii) Researchers seeking to emulate intelligence and learning: is the difference the ability to create, to dream, to imagine? These present challenges – how do we encourage, perform, and enable: For people in information roles there is a need to engage with people, systems, and to facilitate these complex outcomes; how might this be done and what resources and preparation does it require?
(iv) For organisations does our talk about research culture, the research environment, and of information and organisation structure follow through to outcomes (i) and (ii).
(v) Researchers seeking to create automated approaches need to ask how do we define, capture, cultivate, and replicate the intangible products of human cognition and behaviour? Exploring and learning within this area is intended to allow students to develop their own interpretations that they may apply in a range of disciplinary and practical contexts, not least of which is the intention to provide a basis for further research problems.

1. Introduction and initial exploration of the subject including some of the key ideas and frameworks for placing the problems of these desirable, yet largely intangible and hard to define, outcomes within culture, organisation and human experience.

2. The source of creativity has perplexed thinkers throughout the ages: What is the creative muse? Where does inspiration come from? How do you know you have a unique or new idea that contributes to the body of knowledge? Are there practical ways of thinking or providing an environment in which creative connections and inspiration can occur without being stifling the outcome? Explore creativity from the point of view of the researcher, organisation or group: how do we manage, recognise and capture the creative process, and how do we manage/record creativity and issues around who owns outcomes [practical/intellectual/etc].

3. Everyone it seems is interested in serendipity, that satisfying feeling of finding the new and interesting item that they never knew existed. The nature of serendipity is explored with reference to theory and examples. Research methods spanning the capture of serendipity, and the problems that arise will be discussed, alongside questions of whether serendipity as the “fortuitous accident” can be induced, and whether personality and learning can make what some authors refer to as encounters, nonencounterers and super-encounterers. Examine theoretical and practical methods approaches, and consider how might we encourage serendipity in the real world? Again the question of capturing and supporting the Eureka moment.

4. Where do ideas sit within disciplinary frameworks? Interdisciplinarity as one dimension of universities and industries cross-pollinating ideas and methods spanning otherwise separate disciplines. The nature of disciplines and the definition of “discipline”, “cross-discipline” “intra- and inter- discipline will be explored. Definitions and boundaries are important, but are we moving towards new views of these areas, as is the nature of a problem spanning more than one traditional discipline; we also ask at what point can you contribute effectively across disciplinary areas. Issues of encouraging and developing interdisciplinarity and the ways it can/might be enabled are explored with reflection on aspects of training, disciplinary-linguistic challenges, culture, epistemological dimensions and knowledge frameworks: can you really do more than facilitate/enable or encourage interdisciplinarity? The role of communication methods in supporting/shaping new insights and cross-pollinations will be explored, as will questions of whether solo research (the person as interdiscipline) or collaborative (the group or organisation as interdiscipline) will be raised.

5. The three challenges mentioned in the rationale are engaged with – how do we encourage, perform, and enable: For people in information roles there is a need to engage with people, systems, and to facilitate these complex outcomes; how might this be done and what resources and preparation does it require? (iv) For organisations does our talk about research culture, the research environment, and of information and organisation structure follow through to outcomes (i) and (ii). (v) Researchers seeking to create automated approaches need to ask how do we define, capture, cultivate, and replicate the intangible products of human cognition and behaviour? Exploring and learning within this area is intended to allow students to develop their own interpretations that they may apply in a range of disciplinary and practical contexts, not least of which is the intention to provide a basis for further research problems.

6. Overview. The scope of the module is deliberately broad, exposure to thoughts and to readings will connect practical, theoretical and philosophical approaches to these areas. The potential shape and form for the subject, the nature of its occurrence, and case study and examples will be used to explore the issues arising in “being creative serendipitous interdisciplinary”. Students will gain appreciation of the subjects, of the methods used to study them and to contextualise them as real world as well as research focused problems/opportunities.