Air transport operations and aircraft design development is currently governed by incremental improvements. Only once in 16 years there is a step change in civil aviation, often as a result of external factors like military developments. Seldom are step changes due to business or technological developments within the system itself. The introduction of low cost carriers is one of the few examples of novel thinking within the sector. However the concept of airports has not changed since the 1930s, air traffic management is still based on concepts out of the same year, new aircraft look like the first generation of civil jets etc. Is the sector mature and do we still need technological research that is governed by the law of diminishing returns? Can the sector find answers to new challenges that lay ahead? Just to mention a few: environmental pressures often leading to curtailing of air transport; the availability, accessibility and pricing of oil; scarce materials; focus on customer orientation and multi modal solutions; competition from new countries like China and India that experience high growth rates and can spend far more money to become leading aviation countries. Are we looking for creative solutions for long term problems and are we stimulating the younger generation to think out of the box to enable a totally different air transport system in 2050? Initial analysis shows that the education systems do not sufficiently stimulate creative thinking of the new generation. During the EU sponsored Out of the Box and CREATE projects the author together with Trevor Truman experimented with mechanisms to stimulate creative thinking through dedicated workshops. The results were encouraging although perhaps 1% of all ideas generated seem to be promising in the end. These ideas relate to both the overall air transport system, the different elements of that system and breakthrough technologies. The CREATE project recommended to the European Commission to continue the initiatives to generate novel ideas and to enable funding of the most promising ones. And the Commission is willing to follow up this suggestion by funding research. New ideas need to be formulated. These do not always need to be fundamentally new, but can be based on ideas from the past that were not followed up for example due to the limited technological knowledge at the time of invention. Humans resist and are afraid of change. An example is the idea of air taxi operations in Europe developed together with the TU Delft. Instead of emphasizing the possible benefits, people will stress the possible negative elements and hope that nothing will change. Whilst using the argument of safety, many novel ideas are killed at an early stage. In that sense, regulation is a barrier for innovation. There is a need to intensify the search for novel ideas. Universities will have a major task in this process as the industry and research establishments are more and more short term oriented. Creative thinking processes will therefore need to be a permanent element of the university curricula.