Abstract

This chapter defines a creative detour as something created in spaces “in the middle” of a researcher’s life. In the midst of doing something, not necessarily related to research, ideas for new research projects, papers, and books may arise. The term space is important because it brings together the temporal and the material, as the location where detours occur and as a term suitable to describe the experience of a detour. Examples of detour experiences from the author’s life are analyzed as particular kinds of horizontal learning, giving rise to unexpected ideas useful for existing book plans. We need to understand that the human mind travels in sometimes unpredictable ways and that this is often a pre-condition for a creative space to form.