I disagree, honestly. I don't think creativity is an important part of doctoral work. The 'new' requirement is certainly true, but that can simply be an exten

I disagree, honestly. I don't think creativity is an important part of doctoral work. The 'new' requirement is certainly true, but that can simply be an extension in relatively predictable territory. A PhD demonstrates that you can successfully conduct original research. Period. The time for creativity and really making a name for yourself is in a post-doc. That's when you differentiate yourself. You can do this during doctoral work, but it is far from required. As long as you're doing something significant (which any lab you join should be doing), you'll likely encounter plenty of new insights that really do contribute in a novel way. This can let you focus on process and methods that lead to good results. You learn to troubleshoot, to adequately record observations, and to be able to write all that up in a coherent and thorough way. These are the key lessons, and those most valuable and translatable outside academia should you take that route. In the end, I think that creativity comes easily and naturally if you're on top of the literature and actually performing experiments. If you trust your observations (which takes a lot of effort to get there) and are looking at interesting things, you will set down interesting paths of inquiry.