The Paradox of Tethering: Key to Unleashing Creative Excellence in the Research-Education Space

Creative excellence in interdisciplinary research, education, and communication demands stamina and openmindedness. Stamina requires renewal, yet few opportunities for self-renewal are built into most systems. And as experts, our openmindedness is often stifled by our own sense of finishedness. This paper sketches out a strategy for sustained renewal and creative excellence: Each person assembling a gallery of hand-picked intellectual heroes to serve as their life-long teachers. It argues that tethering ourselves to intellectual heroes does not limit our creative potential but instead achieves exactly the opposite effect – enabling us to see and reach our own greatest potentialities. By strengthening the habit of strategic tethering, we situate an active, partially guided search for self-renewal and a heightened receptivity to new ideas at the very core of achieving excellence in the research-education space.