Abstract
Research aimed at generating new knowledge is the heart of the scholarship of discovery. The author of this paper explores how original research ideas can be generated for formal investigations and artsciencing. Curiosity and creativity are presented as “seeds” for originating ideas, and seven patterns (adjacent possible, liquid networks, the slow hunch, serendipity, error, exaptation, and platforms) are described as synergistic potentiators for geminating original research ideas.
One of the challenges for PhD students and research scientists is the call to engage in original scholarly endeavors. Boyer’s (1990, 2016) landmark publication, Scholarship Reconsidered: Priorities of the Professoriate, remains a potent inspiration for redefining and broadening the meaning of “academic scholarship” with colleges and universities, especially universities classified as very high research activity (R1) by the Carnegie Foundation Classification of Higher Education Institutions. Boyer (1990), in his broader notion of scholarship, explained that scholarship indeed “means engaging in original research, but the work of a scholar also means stepping back from one’s investigation, looking for connections, building bridges between theory and practice, and communicating one’s knowledge effectively” (p. 16). Boyer proposed four distinct yet overlapping areas of scholarship: The scholarship of discovery; the scholarship integration; the scholarship of application; and the scholarship of teaching. The scholarship of discovery most commonly means original research. “Research is the central work of higher learning,” and “the scholarship of discovery, at its best, contributes not only to the stock of human knowledge but also to the intellectual climate of a college or university” (Boyer, 2016, p. 69). Scholarly research “celebrates the special exhilaration that comes from a new idea” (Bowen, 1987, p. 269).
Parse (2022) recently expanded the notion of scholarly endeavors by identifying two distinct scholarly processes: Artsciencing and formal investigation. Artsciencing includes creatively conceptualizing and crafting new ideas and is defined as a “scholarly endeavor to advance knowledge requiring deep contemplation to ascetically expose the thought-unthought known in a seamless web of insight” (p. 373). Formal investigation, another way of advancing knowledge in a discipline, is guided by formal methods of inquiry, such as qualitative, quantitative, or mixed methods, recognized as scientific systems to confirm findings from other investigations or to discover new knowledge about a phenomenon of significance to a discipline (Parse, 2022).
At the heart of the scholarship of discovery, whether artsciencing or formal investigations, is the generation of new knowledge. In Envisioning the Future of Doctoral Education: Preparing Stewards of the Discipline, Goldie and Walker (2006) of The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching asserted that the doctoral degree is a signal of high achievement in a discipline in three areas: Generation of new knowledge, conserving the most important ideas and findings that are a legacy of the past and current work, and transforming knowledge by communicating and representing ideas effectively, and teaching, creating, inventing, applying, publishing, and presenting. Generation means making unique contributions to the discipline through artsciencing and formal investigations.
Perhaps for doctoral students and junior faculty alike, the idea of creating “original scholarly endeavors and research” and “generating new knowledge” or making “unique contributions” to the discipline can seem overly daunting. When I was a beginning Master’s student at the University of Toronto, all the students were informed by the faculty that our thesis research needed to be “original work.” I wondered how does one go about discovering “original” research ideas? Few nursing research texts provide guidance in the process for identifying original research ideas. Tappen (2023), one notable exception, lists a number of strategies including: identifying an intriguing theory or research finding needing further testing; identifying a patient experience from your practice having an impact on you; personal experience; building on a previous line of inquiry; identifying a gap in the research literature on a particular topic; a concern raised by the community catching your attention; or choosing a difficult clinical or research issue that you or your colleagues identify as needing a solution or better understanding. The author here extends and explores how original research ideas can be generated for formal investigations and artsciencing. First, curiosity and creativity are explained as “seeds” for originating ideas. Seven “germinations” for originating and cultivating new research ideas (the adjacent possible; liquid networks; the slow hunch; serendipity, error, exaptation; and platforms) based on Johnson’s (2010) Where Do Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation, are each explained.
Seeds
Ideas may be thought of as a relatively novel concept in mental space that enables one to solve a problem or dilemma in the various realms of human concerns such as science, society, markets, and arts, with the potential to become a future social, technical, artistic, or cognitive reality. In this way, ideas can be considered as concepts and proposals that humans dare to think about, foreshadowing some future reality. The realm of ideas is the realm that has not yet been realized in science, products, policies, or institutions. The field of ideas is the field of unrealized potential. Ideas form the basis of scientific progress (Enthoven, 2018). Curiosity and creativity are wellsprings for ideas.
Curiosity
Livio (2017) declared that curiosity is the primary driver of all basic scientific research and philosophical inquiry. Thomas Hobbes, the 17th-century philosopher, referred to the desire to know as a distinguishing feature of humankind (Livio, 2017), while Einstein told one of his biographers, “I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious” (quoted in Livio, 2017, p. 4). Curiosity “fuels the engine of knowledge and drives our compulsion to understand,” and “curiosity is an “essential component of any theoretical and scientific endeavor” (Butcher, 2012, p. 8).
Berlyne (1978), a leading early researcher on the nature of curiosity, identified two main dimensions of curiosity. One dimension extends between perceptual and epistemic curiosity, and the other transverses between specific and diversive curiosity. Epistemic curiosity underlies scientific inquiry, which refers to the veritable desire for knowledge. Puzzling stimuli spark perceptual curiosity and motivate visual inspection, while specific curiosity refers to the desire to know a particular piece of information. Specific curiosity can motivate researchers to examine distinct situations to understand them better and pose possible solutions. In contrast, diversive curiosity is both the desire to explore and seek novel stimulation.
Bateson (1973) suggested another type of curiosity, which has particular relevance to nursing. Empathic curiosity, according to Bateson, is a meta-communicative approach that we can adopt when focusing on the perceptual experiences of another person in the here and now. Meta-communication refers to an underlying tone that often resonates with another more powerfully at an emotional level that reflects our words. Empathic curiosity is underpinned by the core skills of empathetic listening and maintaining a curious attitude (McEvoy et al., 2013). Listening with empathetic curiosity involves not only listening to the words spoken but also to how the words are expressed. This ability to listen and engage a person’s emotions in a caring way is driven by curiosity. Empathic listening involves attending to the words spoken and how the words are expressed, being sensitive, moment by moment, to changes in felt meanings and the emotions a person may be experiencing. Empathic responses communicate appreciation of what other people are experiencing and assist in building feelings of trust, connection, and mutuality. Empathetic curiosity also has relevance during interviewing in qualitative research approaches, especially in phenomenology and hermeneutics research methods. Van Manen (2007) explained that a curious attitude is necessary to direct attention toward areas “where meaning originates” (p. 12).
There are several relevant theories explaining curiosity as a driver underlying scientific discovery. Loewenstein’s (1994) work on the psychology of curiosity led to the development of the information gap theory of curiosity. We are curious when there is a gap between what we know and want to know. Not only does this gap drive our desire to know, but the lack of information is also a significant driver of curiosity. Leslie (2014), in his book Curious: The "Desire to Know and Why Your Future Depends on It," pointed out, “the more we know about something, the more intense our curiosity is about what we don’t know” (p. 38). Thus, information fuels curiosity by creating an awareness of what one does not know, which gives rise to the desire to know more. To feel curious and desire to close an information gap, one needs to be aware of the knowledge gap. For those engaged in the scholarship of discovery, this means diving deep into the research literature related to one’s field of study to discover knowledge gaps. Conducting systematic, scoping, narrative, and integrative scientific literature reviews are a key means to evaluate the state of the science on a given topic; identify the leaders in a field of research; determine what methodologies were used in the past; and, most notably in terms of generating new ideas, literature reviews allow researchers to identify the knowledge gaps and the critical questions about a topic that needs further research.
In addition, approaching what we do not know and want to discover as a mystery rather than as a puzzle has more of a lasting effect. A puzzle draws our curiosity until it is solved, while mystery invites continual inquiry. Freeman Dyson remarked that sciencing is not a collection of truths but, rather, is more like a “continuing exploration of mysteries” (as quoted in Leslie, 2014, p. 49). Mysteries, Leslie (2014) explained, “are more challenging, but more sustaining. They inspire long-term curiosity by keeping us focused on what we do not know” (p. 50). One should always be alert to the mystery behind the puzzle because the mystery will capture our curiosity long after the puzzle is solved. Exploring mysteries “keep us feeling alive and active even when we work in the darkness” (Leslie, 2014, p. 50).
Creativity
Another seed of originality in research is creativity. Rubin (2023), the record producer and executive, co-founder of Def Jam Recordings, American Recordings, former co-president of Columbia Records, and producer of over 170 albums, recently published a book on the creative process titled The Creative Act: A Way of Being (Rubin, 2023). Creativity, Rubin stated, “is to bring something into existence that wasn’t there before,” and “creativity is not a rare ability” (p. 1–2). “Creativity is a fundamental aspect of being human. It’s our birthright. And it’s for all of us” (Rubin, 2023, p. 1). Rubin believes whether one is formally making art or not, everyone is living as an artist.
We perceive, filter, and collect data, then curate an experience for ourselves and others based on this information set. Whether we do this consciously or unconsciously, by the mere fact of being alive, we are all active participants in the ongoing process of creation. (Rubin, 2023, p. 2)
There are multiple definitions of creativity in the research literature. Sawyer, a distinguished researcher and expert in the field of creativity, innovation, and learning at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, has written that creativity comprises three components: (a) newness, (b) combination, and (c) expression into the world. Sawyer defined creativity as a “new mental combination that is expressed into the world” (Sawyer, 2012, p. 7). The most basic tenet of creativity is the thought and action must be novel or original. Sawyer (2012) asserted all thoughts and concepts are combinations of existing thoughts or concepts. Thus, creativity involves a combination of two or more thoughts or concepts that have never been combined or synthesized before. Lastly, researchers who study creativity assert that creativity needs to be expressed for it to be known. Ideas that are not expressed, written down, or communicated to others are not creative. While this view of creativity focuses on the individual, another is grounded more in a group, social, and cultural perspective. From a sociocultural perspective, creativity may be defined as “the generation of a product that is judged to be novel and also to be appropriate, useful, or valuable by a suitable knowledgeable social group” (Sawyer, 2012, p. 8). This definition is widely adopted by researchers studying creativity.
Similarly, Csikszentmihalyi (1996), another principal researcher of the nature of creativity, also viewed creativity not solely as an individual trait but rather as an interaction of a person’s ideas and a sociocultural context that has three elements: (a) a culture that has symbolic rules; (b) a person who brings novelty into the symbolic domain; and (c) a field of experts who recognize and validate the innovation. All three elements are needed for a creative idea, product, or discovery. Csikszentmihalyi (1996) further said that creativity “is a process by which a symbolic domain in the culture is changed” (p. 8).
Csikszentmihalyi (1996) explained the first step to a more creative life is cultivating an interest and curiosity toward things that matter. The relationship between curiosity and creativity has been explored extensively theoretically, but there needs to be more empirical research examining the relationship between curiosity and creativity. Gross et al. (2020) reviewed the research on curiosity and creativity. They found emerging research supports the notion that curious people ask more open-ended questions when working on creative designs which, in turn, enhances the quality of their designs. Research has also shown diversive curiosity predicted creative problem-solving, and that this effect was mediated by information seeking (Hardy et al., 2017; Kaufman et al., 2017). In the process of immersing deeply in the literature related to the area of inquiry; becoming knowledgeable and a master of what has been written, researched, and conceptualized; identifying the key scholars; knowing the methodological strengths and weaknesses of the research; and developing an understanding of how the field of inquiry has evolved, you are not only in a better position to know what is missing in the stream of research, but new and novel ideas about your topic area are more likely to emerge.
Germinations
Steven Johnson’s (2010) book, Where Do Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation, offers what he calls a series of seven “shared properties and patterns” that are useful for generating creative, innovative, and original ideas for artsciencing and formal scientific research endeavors. The patterns are: adjacent possible; liquid networks; the slow hunch; serendipity; error; exaptation; and platforms. I first presented these patterns at the Society of Rogerian Scholars Conference at Lewis University in Oakbrook, Illinois (Butcher, 2015).
Adjacent Possible
The adjacent possible is exploring related or “adjacent” ideas to your starting point. The adjacent possibles are "first order combinations" (Johnson, 2010, p. 11). Johnson (2010) explained the adjacent possible is a kind of shadow future hovering on the edges of the present state of things, a map of all the ways in which the current situation can reinvent itself. An example from my research occurred when I was looking for an original idea for my dissertation research. My interest area was depression in later life, but I did not want to focus my research on what I viewed as a medical diagnosis. Furthermore, although they were medically diagnosed with major depression, the patients I was caring for as a staff nurse on a geropsychiatric unit did not actually meet any of the diagnostic criteria for major depression according to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (American Psychiatric Association, 2022). Rather than having suicidal thoughts, weight loss, insomnia, fatigue, decreased concentration, and impairment in functioning, the patients felt more of a loss of purpose, meaning, vitality, and energy; while they felt like giving up on life, they continued to function day to day. I searched deep into the adjacent research literature for other descriptions of depressive syndromes. I found several: mild depression, subsyndromal depression, existential depression, depletion syndrome, demoralization, and sadness and depression related to life cycle events (Butcher & McGonigal-Kenney, 2005; 2010); but, it was not until I found the descriptions of “dispiritedness” in the works of Jourad (1971) and Bugental and Bugental (1984) that I discovered the concept that captured what I was seeing in older adults. I also found there was no empirical research on the experiences of dispiritedness. Had I not explored the vast range of literature beyond the boundaries of major depression, I would never have found the other descriptions of depression; I would not have discovered the concept of dispiritedness.
Johnson (2010) also stressed the importance of breaking out of imposed boundaries and exploring the edges of possibility that surround us. This may mean changing the physical environment one works in into one that is more fluid, open, and dynamic, or joining multiple kinds of social networks related to your areas of interest, and exploring ideas beyond disciplinary boundaries. Johnson used an analogy describing how we are all surrounded by “spare parts,” all waiting to be picked up and combined into new, magical, original, and innovative configurations.
Liquid Networks
Johnson (2010) explained that original ideas are not a single thing; instead, new ideas consist of all their possible connections. A new idea is a network, a constellation, a swarm. Much like epiphanies, a new idea only occurs when there are few and limited connections. When generating research ideas, connections often occur among related ideas when exploring the research literature on the topic, or the ideas can emerge from conversations with peers, mentors, and collogues. The size and density of the network matter. Networks need to be large enough to have enough connections with the adjacent possibilities to generate new ideas. “High density liquid networks make it easier for innovation to happen” (Johnson, 2010, p. 54). One must find the right balance in the network between order and disorder. New ideas are unlikely to emerge in a network that is too dense and incapable of change. In liquid networks, hunches can connect and reconnect with hunches others may have.
A second characteristic of the liquid network is plasticly. A plastic, or dynamic network, like a liquid, can adopt new configurations and form new patterns. Johnson (2010) used Darwin’s theory about the origin of life which, he postulated, occurred in primordial soup water, perhaps in the depth of oceans, where novel combinations between compounds such as ammonia and phosphoric salts, exposed to light, heat, electrical charges, led to the formation of organic compounds between “hungry carbon atoms” that collided with other elements (Johnson, 2010, p. 51).
An example of a liquid network was the University Iowa College of Nursing research suite. Those faculty who had funded research were given extra office space on the second floor in the research suite. The research suite is a large open space with over 20 pod-like modular workstations. While this extra space was a fantastic benefit for the research teams, an added benefit was the space created opportunities for new collaborations between the research teams on different studies. This shared open space is a fertile research environment for sharing research ideas, teamwork, collaboration, and creativity. Creating open, collaborative research spaces enhances the possibility of serendipitous connections and new ideas arising out of the new connections. PhD students and faculty may want to inquire about the availability of open, collaborative research spaces as a factor when considering where they want to pursue their education or employment. Attending research conferences, participating in research sessions, presenting your work at research meetings, joining research interest groups, and networking with other researchers in your and related research areas, are just a few examples of liquid networks that potentiate the generation of new ideas for beginning and seasoned researchers.
The Slow Hunch
Contrary to popular belief, new ideas do not commonly emerge completely or fully formed. Johnson (2010) pointed out that “most great ideas come into the world half-baked, more hunch than revelation” (p. 71). Most hunches that transform into new ideas unfold over long timeframes rather than in an instant spark of creativity. Johnson pointed out in the narratives of inventors, scientists, artists, and entrepreneurs, there often are stories of great breakthroughs, epiphanies, and flashbulb moments of sudden clarity, but when one examines their stories more closely, one discovers the ideas actually evolved more slowly. Ideas commonly first emerge incomplete or partial, often needing more essential components. More likely, an idea starts with a vague, hard-to-describe solution to an issue that has not been proposed before, “lingering in the shadows of the mind” (Johnson, 2010, p.72). Over time, with the assembling of new connections, the idea takes shape until something new and substantial is discovered. Being immersed in liquid networks and exploring the boundaries of the adjacent possible may help complete emerging new ideas. Since new ideas are fragile, they can be lost easily in our competing everyday demands, so it is important to develop ways to record to remember your hunches. Keeping slow hunches alive is the real challenge. Hunches need to be stored and remembered. Cultivating hunches begins with documenting and recording incomplete ideas as they emerge.
When completing the data synthesis for my dissertation, I had a notebook at my bedside, which I called a “dream book,” where I would write down ideas that came to me, sometimes in the middle of the night. Thirty years later, I still have that notebook. Nurturing the hunch into fruition takes investing time in rereading, dwelling with, reflecting, exploring, diving into the research literature, listening, and speaking to mentors and peers so the hunch can grow and flourish. Similarly, Gladwell (2008) explained “success” comes about through effort and practice. Success, like good research ideas, emerges through hard work. “People at the very top don’t work just harder or even much harder than everyone else. They work much, much harder” (Gladwell, 2008, p. 39).
Serendipity
Serendipity is the occurrence and development of events by chance in a beneficial way. Discovery prospers when “ideas can serendipitously connect and recombine with other ideas, when hunches can stumble across other hunches that successfully fill in their blanks” (Johnson, 2010, p. 123). However, for serendipity to occur, one must be open to this possibility, be in an environment with the resources for new connections to occur, and have dedicated time to immerse oneself in a network where new ideas can flourish.
I had many serendipitous occurrences throughout my career. One example occurred when I struggled to develop a concept capturing what I saw in the clinical setting in older adults misdiagnosed as having “major depression.” I had a hunch there was a different and related phenomenon, a more mild form of depression, consisting more of a loss of purpose, meaning, energy, and vitality. Often, I would go to the main library at the University of South Carolina, sit on the floor between the rows and stacks of journals, and pick a journal and start looking through volume after volume at the table of contents, from one year to the next. One particular day, I selected the Journal of Humanistic Psychology since I knew Rogerian nursing science grounded in a humanistic perspective. Years earlier, when planning a workshop together, Rogers stated that she was going to use a Carl Rogers’ “person-centered nondirective approach” (M. Rogers, personal communication, 1988) to demonstrate how to interview a simulated patient in front of an audience. Carl Rogers is one of the founders of humanistic psychology, and I promptly went to the bookstore and bought three of Carl Rogers’ books since I knew little about his work at the time. I recalled this connection between humanistic psychology and Rogerian science as I headed to the library. Then, as I looked at the table of contents for each issue, I ran across the article by Bugental and Bugental (1984) titled Dispiritedness: A New Perspective on a Familiar State. The topic and content caught my attention, so I glanced at it but did not photocopy the article. At first, I was unsure of the connection, and I questioned the focus on “spirit” because I knew from a Rogerian perspective spirit was considered particularistic.
When I returned home, I recalled I had a file folder on depression which I had not looked at for years. Curious about what was in the folder, I found the folder had just two articles. Amazingly, one of those articles was the same article on dispiritedness written by the Bugentals (1984) which I had just seen in the library. I do not recall how I acquired this folder and article, but the name of a charge nurse on a psychiatric unit I worked on in Canada was written on the article. I do not remember her giving me the folder or the article. Now that the article was in my hands, I sat and read it. Immediately after reading it, I knew dispiritedness was precisely the concept I had been searching for. The description of dispiritedness in the article connected to what I saw in older persons who were in low spirits, manifested by a loss of meaning, purpose, and energy. I remember informing my dissertation chair the next day, “I know what my concept is for the focus of my dissertation.” I cannot explain how this happened, but it was just serendipity that it was the same article I ran across in the library, which I had all along. I needed to reconceptualize and define dispiritedness from a unitary perspective (Butcher, 1996).
One’s discovery may be interesting and informative, but it is only serendipitous if it fills a piece of the puzzle one is poring over. “Serendipitous discoveries often involve exchanges across traditional disciplines” and often manifest out of “unlikely collisions” (Johnson, 2010, p. 109). In other moments, ideas may suddenly come together while taking a walk or a shower, when your mind is removed from everyday tasks. Reading and immersing in the related or even unrelated literature; listening to podcasts and TED talks; following social media sites related to your research interest area; exploring databases with Google searches; reading related blogs; and using ChatGPT (Chat Generative Pretrained Transformer) to research key research topics all can open the possibility of cultivating serendipity by combining new ideas. When ideas are in the public domain, recorded, and stored in databases, these systems create an architecture of the possibility of creating new ideas through serendipity.
Error
An error is an act that is a mistake, a deficiency that fails to meet or achieve an intended outcome. In nursing, errors are dreaded in practice since preventable infections, inaccurate documentation, medication errors, and patient falls are a risk to patient safety. In a research context, errors often refer to statistical errors, measurement, and sampling errors. Research errors typically refer to actions or conclusions that are demonstrably and unequivocally incorrect from a logical or epistemological point of view (logical fallacies, mathematical mistakes, statements not supported by the data, incorrect statistical procedures, or analyzing the wrong dataset; Brown et al., 2018). However, error, when it comes to innovation, is common. Johnson (2010) cogently explains error is what made human evolution possible. According to Johnson, Darwin’s theory of natural selection is a process where mistakes in the form of mutations allow for the preservation of favorable random variations and the rejection of injurious variations. “Error is what made humans possible in the first place” (Johnson, 2010, p. 142).
In a research context, there are many examples of how an error led to creating an original good idea. For instance, de Forest (1950) described how a series of errors led to an invention that made radio, television, and the first digital computers possible. His creation was a triode, a vacuum glass tube with three electrodes. However, the experiments failed for years until he considered placing a third electrode into the vacuum tube. The resulting triode could serve as an amplifier as well as a switch. Johnson (2010) explained how de Forest was wrong about the ability of the gas in the tube to serve as a detector, but he kept probing and following his hunch at the edges of his error until he discovered something that worked.
When we make mistakes and are wrong, we must challenge our assumptions and adopt new approaches and alternative strategies. Errors are not the goal, but they are inevitable, and when we examine errors, new insights and new trials can transform errors into new ideas. Innovation thrives on error when errors are made useful. Kuhn (1970) pointed out that only the accumulation of anomalies poses a serious problem to an existing disciplinary matrix. Anomalies undermine the practice of normal science and reveal inadequacies in approaches to solutions to problems casting doubt on the underlying theory. According to Kuhn (1970), science develops by adding new truths by correcting past errors. New ideas in nursing research will emerge when we scrutinize errors and transform errors into new possibilities.
Exaptation
Exaptation is a term from evolutionary theory where an organism develops a trait that serves a particular function, but later the feature is used for another innovative function. An example is the evolution of bird feathers, which first evolved to assist nonflying dinosaurs to insulate themselves in cold weather. As dinosaurs evolved into birds, feathers made flight possible.
New ideas can originate when researchers take a strategy, intervention, or process used in a particular context, population, purpose, or situation, and then apply and test the strategy in a different context. For example, I have a background in narrative therapy as a nurse psychotherapist, and one of the strategies used for helping clients find meaning in their life stories and situations is journaling. In a phenomenological study, I conducted on the experience of caregivers of persons with memory loss (Butcher et al., 2001), one of the major themes I found in their narratives was “finding meaning and joy.” I reasoned that since not all caregivers found meaning and joy, perhaps I could develop an intervention that could be used to help caregivers find meaning amid the stress, anguish, and trauma of witnessing a family member disappear to the ravishes of Alzheimer’s disease. This is until one of my senior faculty mentors, Toni Tripp-Reimer, stated: “Howard, you don’t need to create a new intervention to facilitate meaning-making; they are already out there.” Like what? I asked. “Well, like narrative therapy, journaling, and account making are just a few examples. You need to go to the psychology department and talk with John Harvey” (T. Tripp-Reimer, personal communication, 1999). Harvey, a social psychologist, met with me and stated that he did not view “account making” as an intervention but as an activity that occurs naturally, day to day, in everyone’s life (Harvey, 1996). Instead, he stated, I needed to talk with James Pennebaker at the University of Texas, who has developed a meaning-making intervention he referred to as written emotional expression.
Written emotional expression is an effective and efficient meaning-making intervention developed by Pennebaker (1993, 1997) involving asking participants to write brief accounts expressing their deepest thoughts and feelings about a traumatic experience. Systematic reviews of more than 150 controlled studies found significant health benefits of written emotional expression, including reduced stress, enhanced physical health, increased immune function, fewer days in the hospital, fewer stress-related visits to a physician, improved mood/affect, reduced depressive symptoms, and improved working memory in a wide range of populations, including healthy adults (Frattaroli, 2006; Frisina et al., 2004; Smyth, 1998). However, the intervention had not yet been tested in a population of family caregivers of persons with Alzheimer’s Disease, nor a population dealing with a current ongoing traumatic situation.
A few months after immersing myself in the written emotion research literature, I went to the Rogerian conference at New York University in 2001, where I heard Dr. Pat Liehr present her research on the use of story theory. We talked after her presentation, and I shared my interest in written emotional expression with her and wondered if she had heard about it. She then informed me that she just happened to be doing a research residency with Pennebaker and arranged for me to visit him at his research lab at the University of Texas. Pennebaker became a consultant on my National Institute of Nursing Research (NINR) grant submission that was funded a year later. This sequence of events illustrates how adjacent possible, fluid networks, serendipity, and exaptation all contributed to the funding of my research study testing the effects of written emotional expression of depression, caregiver burden, perceived stress, cortisol dysregulation, and finding in a population of family caregivers. I simply expatiated the written emotional expression intervention protocol developed for populations writing about past trauma to a new population of family caregivers dealing with ongoing trauma (Butcher et al., 2016). In another example of exaptation, the journal writings completed by participants in the experimental group were later used in another study using a hermeneutic phenomenological approach guided by Ricoeur (Bursch & Butcher, 2012).
Platforms
The last pattern Johnson (2010) discussed in his text is platforms. Platforms stack on top of each other; thus, one platform provides the foundation for even more platforms. Johnson explained how the dams beavers build and coral reefs are examples of platforms. Beavers dam rivers turning forests into wetlands and creating a new platform, an entire ecosystem where a host of new species thrive just as coral build on top of one another, creating a new platform where mounds, plates, and cervices create a new habitat for millions of other species.
In research, platforming is a source of new ideas when one idea serves as a foundation or springboard for a new idea. Researchers are continually building new ideas based on established research and theories. I return to my program of research as an example. While I was completing the research study testing written emotional expression funded by NINR, the University of Iowa announced a new funding source, the Iowa Informatics Initiative, for studies using an informatics approach, such as web-based research. The NINR study involved in-person data collection, where I drove to the caregivers’ homes because many could not travel due to the demands of the caregiver role. Thus, the study sample was limited to family caregivers within a 5-hour drive from Iowa City. With funding from the Iowa Informatics Initiative, I replicated the in-person version of the study on a website so participants could complete the consent, pretest measures, journaling intervention, and posttests on a website (Butcher et al., 2016). Thus, the first in-person study served as a platform for the innovation of placing the entire study on a website. It enabled me to recruit family caregivers of persons with Alzheimer’s Disease from across the country as long as they had access to a computer.
The idea of a successful program of research is where one study serves as a platform for the next. Holzemer (2009) defined a program of research as an area of high interest and passion, enabling the researcher to be committed to the interest area over time. A program of research addresses a significant issue relevant to the health and well-being of people and designed to build knowledge through a series of studies over time that are linked to rigorous research methodologies. Holzemer (2009) cogently pointed out that building a program of research is not a linear process but, rather, an iterative unpredictable process where, through trial and error, the researcher begins again and again. Knowledge builds incrementally; sometimes, there may be quantum leaps of change in the researcher’s understanding, and other times the ideas building on one another is more like following a slow hunch. Often, findings from one study lead to new research questions, approaches, research designs, and perhaps even new theoretical perspectives, as one study serves as a platform for the next toward the goal of making a difference in the lives of human beings concerning their health and well-being.
Conclusion
All research begins with an idea. Ideas are the starting point for potentialities. Collecting ideas is best approached with active awareness and boundless curiosity. The seven patterns (adjacent possible, liquid networks, slow hunch, serendipity, error, exaptation, and platforms) together and synergistically, are potentiators for originating new ideas. Young (2012), writing in the field of advertising, developed a five-step strategy to foster new ideas that can be applied here to scientific research endeavors. First is gathering information and knowledge, which Young described as raw material. Searching and gathering information on the topic need to be in-depth and broad in scope, exploring related knowledge from multiple sources, fields of knowledge, and perspectives. Ideas often arise from cross-fertilization and synthesis of information from different fields of knowledge. The second step is “the working over,” which refers to examining the information gathered from different perspectives, bringing different ideas together in new combinations to create new and novel relationships. The next stage is much like incubation, where one lets the unconscious mind dwell and process one’s new found insights and knowledge. The fourth stage is a magical phase, when a eureka or a-ha moment often emerges unexpectedly, sometimes suddenly. The idea is explored, tested, revised, and birthed into reality in the last step. Disseminating ideas will lead to critique and feedback, allowing one to refine and further develop new ideas.
