Creative Need

I am in the need of being creative.
I know that this is not something that you can learn how to do, or follow a formula of creativity. One teacher of mine once said that to stay creative during our life we need to get out of our strong habits and specialty domains.This is easier said than done, of course. She gave us some ideas of how to do that: from time to time, read books in a completely different area. Say you are an economist, try to read a book in psychology. Other idea was to develop some hobbies not related to your job, or join on-line discussion groups, or on-line communities in different areas of expertise. Of course, you need to understand something about these discussions, otherwise it will be useless.
I have noticed from my experience that these suggestions are indeed helpful. I have read so many books lately about education and children' development that I start to relate them to problems I find in my work. I find that these sometimes crazy ideas may become an innovative solution, because it was never tried. Moreover, the on-line groups and communities I belong, such as parenting, ecology and permaculture groups are often a very good source of diverse knowledge, and some videos or texts I find there are great sources of inspiration.
I am in the need of finding a new research problem. I have a research theme, and some research problems already identified by others, but these are out of Information Systems area. If you want to do a Phd in Information Systems the least you can do is to research a problem in the area, of course. The problem does not need to be specifically in technology, it can also be related to information, which, for me, is god.
The thing is that I am really interested in addressing a few questions related to sustainability and servitization, but the problems I identify fall either in the field of ecology or economics.
Technology is important to create solutions, but I am failing to fit Information Technology in this problem.

Post Note: I had the privilege, while writing this text, to add permaculture and servitization to Google dictionary. These are indeed words that should be in an updated dictionary :)