Just finished my second of 10 weeks summer teaching. After that I will be involved in more traveling and from December work again "in corporate", as my 5 years sabbatical is then over. This time feels a bit like decades ago when I went to work after graduation with thousands of ideas. Back then I was lucky to find environments that were very conducive in turning ideas into projects, products and profits. And I feel the same excitement when I will return to Volkwagen in December. Just a few differences are that I do not graduate from University, but I am a Professor. And then there is this strange difference, that I feel short breath when I run up a mountain and somehow 4 times 50 push ups as morning gymnastics don't come so easy any more. But other things come much easier.

Of course I am asked a lot, whether such a sabbatical "makes sense". Depends a bit on what "makes sense" means. Efficiency and "having new ideas" (I deliberately don't use the term "innovation") seem to be bi-polar forces. If you are only efficient by staying on the strait path then you have no new ideas. And if you only have new ideas, then you get nothing done. So, playing with both of them seems the key to "getting new things done". Perhaps this is the true sense of "creativity" in terms of creating something. And after 5 years being inefficient, I am exactly looking forward to do that: getting new ideas on the road - and I mean this not as a metaphor, but quite literally.

As I have just now the teaching load (that's how they call it strangely) of two tenured Professors (104 man weeks) in only 10 weeks, I am actually ten times more busy if you see it in teaching density. Having said that, I already see myself getting lynched on the lift to the Senior Common Room next week: "Did you just say we are lazy? ..." ... Nono, you are just so much more creative! Better have a drink. But only one for me, because I (!) have to get up early, haha!