A common wisdom in setting up a research team is to leverage research networks to recruit students with specific backgrounds which are useful to the faculty members’ research. This leads to a quick ramp-up of activities, and often leads to a steady flow of incoming graduate students into the research team, letting it grow and prosper. In my research team at NUS, we have followed a different approach. The central piece of our approach has always been “coming up with new ideas”, and encouraging students to be imaginative, instead of only being problem solvers. Thus, instead of utilizing students to solve a given problem – we have encouraged students to be collaborators in the research journey, while they learn the art of research along the way. This has created a lot more space for research discussions in my team, as opposed to students carrying out specific research activities assigned to them. For the same reason, in graduate mentoring, I have always seen my role as “PhD advisor” instead of “PhD supervisor” and stressed as much as possible to my students that they should see me as PhD advisor.  While the use of the word “advisor” instead of “supervisor” may seem like a simple change of word, it is much more than a change of syntax, as it denotes a change of mindset. Thus, the focus is on “mentorship” instead of “supervision”.