Creative Caffeine

The creative power of multidisciplinary teams

Do you tend to stick with ‘your kind’ in the workplace?

Birds of a feather flock together. This is often true both of avian creatures and of working professionals. We tend to stick with our own kind, preferring to work and fraternise with colleagues we relate easiest to, within our own profession, department or even our own specialisation. This is understandable and is explained by neuroscience which shows how unfamiliar territory can trigger fear and uncertainty.

Yet working with people from different disciplines is where the creative gold lies... in mingling with, learning from and being open to dissimilar and unfamiliar perspectives.

A non-lawyer wins Europe’s Most Innovative Legal Practitioner Award

Every year the Financial Times index features ten individuals for Europe Innovative Lawyers Awards. I was interested to see that this year, in the latest European report, the winning individual is Marion Palmer...

Everything in nature is part of a system

When it comes to creativity, we have a lot to learn from nature, especially when it comes to working together to achieve a better outcome.

German forester, Peter Wohlleben, shone a light on how trees work together in forests his 2016 book, The Hidden Life of Trees. Over a period of 20 years, Wohlleben studied the lives of trees whilst managing a forest in Germany. He learned that trees communicate complex information to one another via smell, taste, and electrical impulses. Rather than standing as lone organisms they form a strong community sharing nutrients via their root systems, ‘nurturing’ younger trees, supporting sick or aging trees, and warning each other of danger.

Wohlleben describes this incredible warning system:

“Four decades ago, scientists noticed something on the African savannah. The giraffes there were feeding on umbrella thorn acacias, and the trees didn’t like this one bit....