Juha Merilä:  Miten saamme luovia tutkimusympäristöjä – How to build creative research environments?

04.12.2008

There was something special about Uppsala University’s Section of Animal Ecology at Department of Zoology in the 1980s and 1990s. Outsiders recognized it as one of the world leading strongholds of research in evolutionary ecology, and insiders – perhaps through slightly tinted spectacles – as the best imaginable place to be, study and pursue research. Nature papers were plenty, and many of today’s prominent ecologists and evolutionary biologists received education in this environment. A lot of beer has been spent in informal discussions attempting to unravel the secret behind Uppsala’s success at that time. Was there a secret?

Before attempting to answer this specific question, it may be instructive point out couple of general features characterizing creative research environments. One is that they are usually quite small and thereby promoting close and intensive interactions among individuals. Another one is what could be called an ‘outbreeding’ effect: many of the most creative scientists have not made their most important contributions to science in home ground, but while working somewhere else. This ties with the contention that tolerance and even endorsement of diversity may be essential components in formation of creative research environments.

Treatments of creative research environments also stress the importance of something known as ‘collective creativity’. Collective creativity is seen as an emergent property of the environment founded on interactions among individuals with differing skills, views and ideas. In his book ‘Kreativitetens geografi’, Prof. Gunnar Törnqvist envisions informal networks and interactions among these individuals as critical promoters of creative research environments. He also points out an interesting contrast between informal networks and more bureaucratic organizations: the latter tend to value repeatability and predictability, and at the same time, perhaps even discourage creativity because of its unpredictability. Hence, hierarchy-free unforced interactions might be essential ingredients for building of creative research environments.

An interesting feature of creative research environments is that while reasons for their emergence can at least sometimes be understood and recognized ad hoc, it appears to be much more difficult to understand the causes behind failures. In other words, there is an invisibility problem: while we can learn from the positive examples, the negative ones - situations where all the necessary ingredients were present, but nothing remarkable emerged – are way harder to identify, or at least, understand. Like many other things in life, success depends not only on access to necessary resources – whether material or immaterial – but also on hindrances. Hence, when attempting build creative research environments, identification of hindrances would appear to be equally – if not more – important as the identification facilitating factors. Delicate instruments are hard to build, but as we all know, so easy to break.

Going back to the question posed in the beginning: was there a secret behind Uppsala’s success in creating an extra-ordinarily creative research environment? Perhaps not in the strict sense of the meaning, but all discussions on this topic seem to converge towards a resolution which attributes the success to a strong and visionary professor – Staffan Ulfstrand – a Santa Claus look-a-like, who headed the Section of Animal Ecology in 1978–1998.

He endorsed diversity at all levels, hiring talented people with varying backgrounds irrespective of their ethnicity and nationality. He endorsed diversity in research topics, models and approaches: he did not seem to police the research to any particular direction, but let the diversity flourish. He provided people with material and intellectual resources they needed, including frequent and diverse venues for interactions and discussions. For instance, Uppsala experienced a steady – almost weekly – stream of top-level foreign scientists who were flown in to deliver seminars and provide feedback. All this took place in a cozy (but still competitive), hierarchy-free and debating culture, where science was always in the centre. Administrative issues were almost unheard – they were tackled behind closed doors and kept away from coffee-table discussions.

Juha Merilä
Academy Professor
Department of Biological and Environmental Sciences
University of Helsinki

Kuva: Ari Aalto

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