The coexistence of prolate and oblate shapes in light selenium and krypton isotopes has been investigated using the complementary techniques of low-energy Coulomb excitation with radioactive ions beams and lifetime measurements of excited states after fusion-evaporation reactions. The resulting B(E2) values and spectroscopic quadrupole moments represent a sensitive test for configuration mixing calculations going beyond the mean-field approach. The onset of collectivity for neutron-rich nuclei near 68Ni has been investigated using a new technique to measure lifetimes with the recoil distance Doppler shift method after multi-nucleon transfer reactions