Look sideways—not for new parts, but new pairings

Creativity is just connecting things—especially things that haven't been put together before.

Take transparent wood. Sounds impossible, right? But scientists at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, led by Professor Lars Berglund, figured it out.

They started with ordinary balsa wood, something we’ve used for centuries. Then they stripped out the lignin—the molecule that gives wood its brown colour and blocks light. What was left was a fragile, pale scaffold of cellulose.

Here’s the genius move: they filled that scaffold with a clear polymer called PMMA (the same plastic in Plexiglass). The result? A material that looks like glass, but is stronger, lighter, biodegradable, and even better at insulating heat.

Transparent wood didn’t require inventing new materials. It came from combining old ones in a way no one had tried before.

That’s the essence of creativity: the combination of unexpected techniques and materials.

If you're looking for new ideas to solve a problem, start looking sideways—not for new parts, but new pairings.

Transparent wood developed by scientists at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm.