What Is Creativity? 29 Questions Answered

What is creativity?

Scientists from many eras have tried to answer this question. Today, most definitions describe creativity through two main characteristics: uniqueness (the product of creativity differs from anything that existed before) and importance (it is useful and applicable: in public life, in a specific situation, in solving a concrete problem).

These two characteristics describe the final product of creativity well, but other questions remain open and still spark fierce debate among scientists.

What types of creativity are there?

Scientists distinguish two main types: everyday creativity, which we use in daily life and which has limited importance (an improvised dinner, an original wish), and creativity in a specific field that matters to society as a whole (Shakespeare’s plays, Leonardo da Vinci’s inventions, Einstein’s discoveries).

Kaufman later added two more types in his “Four C” model of creativity: mini-c creativity, where the result is new and meaningful only to the person who creates it (for example, reaching on your own a conclusion someone else has already proposed), and pro-c creativity, where the result matters within a professional field but has not yet become important more widely. There are other well-known classifications too, by Boden, Robinson and Craft, Csikszentmihalyi and others.

What is the mental process behind creativity?

Several theories explain it. According to Perkins, creativity and intelligence come from one and the same mental process; in creativity, the result is simply unique and important.

Others, such as Guilford, Wallach and Kogan, think the mental process behind creativity is unique in nature and needs its own models. Among the best known are Mednick’s association theory, Wallach’s four-stage model, Guilford’s divergent thinking and Poincaré’s two-phase model. There is still no broadly accepted model of the mental process behind creativity.

How does associative thinking explain creativity?

In the 1960s, Mednick proposed the association theory of creativity. According to it, creativity is a process in which separate elements form combinations that are new and useful at the same time.

Such combinations arise in three main ways: by chance, through an unexpected event (the famous story of Newton and the apple); by similarity, linking similar elements (rhyming words); and through mediation, by an element associated with the others that brings them together (a diagnosis that combines various symptoms). Mednick also named factors that shape a person’s ability to form new and useful associations, such as how many elements a person has to combine (which depends on experience and knowledge) and how many and how varied the combinations are.

What is divergent thinking?

Guilford was the first to use the term to distinguish two main types of thinking: convergent and divergent. Convergent thinking uses previous experience and knowledge to reach a single solution. It usually follows formal logical operations such as analysis, induction, deduction and synthesis, and rarely requires creativity.

Divergent thinking is the spontaneous, open-minded generation of ideas that then develop into many new and unusual solutions. It is divergent thinking that Guilford associates with creativity. Tasks he used to demonstrate and measure it include finding alternative uses for everyday objects (a clothes hanger, a brick), listing the possible consequences of hypothetical events (what if the land sank under the sea?) and proposing different titles for made-up stories. Multiglyphs works the same way: one glyph, as many meanings as you can find.

What is the place of creativity in science?

Creativity is most often linked to the arts: painting, music, theatre, sculpture, literature. Yet it is part of almost every field of human life and is especially important in science. Some say that science, like art, could not exist without creative thinking.

This contradicts the widespread view that logic and rationality lead science. The reason for the disparity may lie in education, which presents science as a set of theories and facts rather than a process of observing, analysing and describing the world. Creativity is present at every step of the scientific process: defining the problem and the hypotheses, developing and evaluating theories, collecting and analysing data, and publishing and sharing the results.

Are animals creative?

Until recently, scientists thought only people were creative. Recent studies have refuted this, showing that some animals are capable of remarkable creativity: orangutans, chimpanzees, gorillas, elephants, dolphins, octopuses and crows among them. Their creativity shows mostly in innovative solutions (for hunting, defence, storing food or play), in making and using original tools, and in building functional, even aesthetic, homes.

Some animals are even known for art: the painting chimpanzees Congo and Cheeta, Cholla the painting horse and Nora the piano-playing cat, among others. According to scientists, animal creativity reveals two of its key characteristics: it can be learned, and it is crucial for the survival of a species.

What are the personal benefits of creativity?

Creativity produces something valuable and useful: it solves a problem, teaches, entertains. But the benefits are not only for the people it is meant for. Scientists have found that creativity also does good to the person who shows it.

It can bring greater happiness and a better mood (by letting us release and express feelings), satisfaction and fulfilment (a sense of achievement and maturity), a feeling of freedom and control (by pushing past what is allowed and accepted), self-confidence and self-esteem, and commitment. Creative people have been found to be healthier and more effective, more positive and optimistic, more socially active, and to have a strong sense of fairness. It is no accident that creativity is now associated with a healthy, good life.

What is the economic and social importance of creativity?

Organisations, the main economic units of a country, often work in a dynamic and highly competitive environment. To survive and grow, they must innovate regularly: in products, technology, markets and management. Behind every innovation is the creation of new solutions, or the change of existing ones, in a way that adds value for the organisation, its stakeholders and society.

Creativity is therefore an inseparable part of modern organisational life. It makes organisations more competitive and productive, improves the quality of their products and services, uses resources more efficiently, and makes them more adaptable and sustainable. That is why modern theories of economic growth, such as endogenous growth theory, see innovation, and creativity in particular, as one of the leading factors of growth and prosperity.

How can creativity be measured?

The most widely used approach is the psychometric one: tests (such as those of Guilford, Torrance, and Wallach and Kogan) assess aspects of creativity with indicators designed for the purpose. Among them are originality (how unique the answers are compared with other people’s), fluency (how many answers a person generates), flexibility (how varied the answers are) and elaboration (how detailed they are).

Another frequent approach is the social-personality one, supported by Amabile, Lubart and others, which assesses creativity through personal and socio-cultural characteristics. There are also historiometric, behavioural and evolutionary approaches, among others. Multiglyphs uses the psychometric approach: it counts your ideas (fluency) and the associations behind them, and rewards ideas few others saw (originality).

What determines how creative we are?

Scientists name many factors: age, intelligence, experience, knowledge, personality (temperament, character, perception), the specific situation (environment, emotional state) and the socio-cultural environment (family, social status, cultural values).

Many of these are beyond our control, which can make wanting to be more creative feel out of reach. Yet scientists have growing evidence that creativity can be improved through regular stimulation and practice.

Which environment favours creativity?

History has many examples of creativity flourishing in harsh, even hostile, environments, and of creativity absent in favourable ones. So the right environment is not a necessary and sufficient condition for creativity. Still, some features of the environment make creativity considerably more likely.

Among them are a suitable workplace (quiet and calm, without distractions, stimulating thought), support from friends and family, frequent meetings with people who share our interests, and a rich cultural and historical heritage with access to art, sport and science centres. Individual differences matter too: an environment that helps one person may hinder another. That is why scientists say the most favourable environment is one that lets people choose their own surroundings.

How does education influence creativity?

Because education shapes people so strongly, its effect on creativity has been studied extensively, and the results are worrying: they suggest modern education often has a negative effect.

The main reasons include an assessment system that rewards convergent (one-right-answer) thinking, does not allow mistakes and ignores individual differences; a hierarchy of subjects in which the sciences and humanities are the main measure of success; extreme conservatism (intolerant of difference) or extreme liberalism (encouraging individualism over shared interests); teaching knowledge mechanically, without stimulating curiosity; the attitude towards creativity and how much creative traits are encouraged; and an unhealthy school climate, with tension, low motivation and poorly qualified teachers.

Which personality traits are linked to creativity?

Many studies have looked for links between personality and creativity. Traits found to be positively related to creativity include self-confidence (especially in one’s ability to be creative), adaptability and flexibility, independence, readiness to take risks without fear of failure, strong inner motivation, curiosity, a sense of humour, a strong imagination, artistry, intuition, open-mindedness, and sensitivity and emotionality.

Other traits are often found in creative people but make it harder for them to fit in socially: selfishness and egocentrism, impulsiveness, cynicism and intolerance, immaturity, absent-mindedness, nervousness and hyperactivity.

How does the family influence creativity?

The family plays an essential role in everyone’s development, and researchers have identified family characteristics that favour creativity. They include an authoritative parenting style, in which parents respect their children’s personality and value their independence; well-educated, cultured and financially independent parents; an enriched home with things that spark curiosity and thought (books, puzzles) and varied experiences (museums, sport); and a child-centred approach that takes special care to develop talent.

Perhaps surprisingly, research also links creativity to family stress (physical or psychological trauma, the death of a parent, divorce, addiction), illness, poverty and social injustice, as well as to mixed marriages, immigrant families and multilingual homes.

How important are experience and knowledge?

Studies show that people who showed exceptional creativity and transformed their fields did so after long periods of education and practice, even when they had natural talent and were child prodigies, like Mozart and Picasso. Analyses of notable people suggest composers need about ten years of hard practice before their first significant work, painters about six and writers about five.

Knowledge and experience help us see the limits of a field and generate more varied solutions, free us from technique so we can experiment and improvise, and let us judge realistically how new and significant our ideas are. But too much knowledge and experience, hardened into ready-made solutions and stereotypes, can also hurt creativity.

How do cultural values and beliefs influence creativity?

Culture, the shared values and beliefs of a society or group, strongly influences how we understand, judge and show creativity. In Western societies, creativity is linked to unique and useful products that bring revolutionary change to economic, social and cultural life. Eastern societies expect creativity to produce unique, though not necessarily significant, solutions that build on existing ones: evolutionary change.

Another difference: the West values mostly the final product, while in the East the process of creation matters most, often seen as part of personal and spiritual growth. Western societies have been found to be strong at generating ideas, Eastern societies at implementing them, often explained by Western individualism and Eastern collectivism.

How does creativity change with age?

Two basic models describe how creativity changes over a lifetime. The first supports the popular view that creativity declines with age: it rises to a peak around 30 and then gradually falls. Despite its popularity, this model is much criticised and often contradicted by people who show exceptional creativity late in life.

The second model holds that creativity develops throughout life but shows itself in different ways depending on our needs at the time. It is less popular but supported by a number of studies. Other, more complex models describe creativity as a series of rises and falls.

Do rewards make people more creative?

Many studies, across age groups, tasks, workplaces and reward schemes, have asked whether rewards stimulate creativity. The results differ, but some patterns stand out.

Creativity benefits from rewards aimed specifically at how new and important the results are (rather than at, say, quantity), and from the number, value and variety of rewards, especially for older people and for tasks that are not too complex. Creativity suffers when rewards are given just for taking part or finishing a task, whatever the result. And creativity seems unaffected by competition between participants or by the type of reward (praise, money or something else).

How do businesses and managers treat creativity?

Organisations are often seen as purposeful, rigidly structured systems that suppress creative thinking. Yet many achieve high levels of creativity by providing the right organisational environment (a modern workplace, cultural and social diversity), culture (collectivist, with low power distance and high tolerance of uncertainty), structure (decentralised management and flat hierarchies), policies (fewer restrictive rules, more recommended practices), roles (more autonomy with more responsibility) and work (varied and stimulating tasks).

Creativity in an organisation also depends on its people (their motivation, cognitive abilities, emotional intelligence and attitude to creativity) and on its teams (their structure, diversity and competence).

Can computers be creative?

Fast-developing computer technology increasingly challenges the view that only people can be creative. Computer systems successfully imitate many creative activities: composing and improvising music; writing short stories, poems and haiku; inventing jokes, metaphors and analogies; painting landscapes, portraits and abstract compositions; designing buildings and whole urban plans; writing news and reports, analysing events and forecasting; and building imaginary worlds.

Impressive as the results are, they come from predefined algorithms (probabilistic, genetic, recursive), not from conscious, deliberate action. This gives scientists serious grounds to think that computers can imitate creativity but not truly show it.

Note (2026): Written before today’s generative AI. The debate it describes, whether AI imitates or shows creativity, is livelier than ever: studies now find that AI can beat the average person on creativity tests, but not the most creative people.

What is the role of luck in creativity?

Many discoveries that changed human life came from lucky coincidences. In 1928, the Scottish scientist Alexander Fleming noticed that a blue-green mould growing in one of his Petri dishes had destroyed the colonies of staphylococci around it. That is how he discovered penicillin, still one of the most widely used antibiotics. The pacemaker, X-rays, the microwave oven and plastic are other such discoveries.

These examples led scientists to coin a term for discovering something new and useful by accident, without prior intent: serendipity. Detailed analysis of such discoveries showed, though, that luck alone was not enough. The discoverers had to be well prepared to connect facts and events that seemed unrelated. As the saying goes, luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.

What are the barriers to creativity?

A widely held view is that we are born creative but that, over time, various influences suppress this ability. The barriers mentioned most often are routines, stereotypes and habits that make us behave the same way in the same circumstances; norms and rules whose strict observance limits our freedom; perceptual and cognitive limits that reduce our sensitivity to the world and our ability to see it from different points of view; cultural and social pressure on anyone who is different; emotional barriers such as fear of failure or rejection, lack of self-confidence and stress; a lack of resources such as time and money; and a lack of motivation.

How can creativity be unleashed?

To unleash creativity, we need to rethink some commonly accepted views. According to Roger von Oech, these are: that there is always one right answer; that whatever is not logical is wrong; that rules must be followed strictly, without question; that everything must be practical; that ambiguity must be avoided; that failure is bad and a sign of weakness; that playing with ideas is frivolous; that only narrow specialisation guarantees success; that creativity is the privilege of a few; and that anyone who doesn’t stick to social norms looks foolish and is misunderstood.

Can creativity be improved?

Not long ago, it was widely believed that creativity is fixed and cannot be improved. Today this is much debated. Scientists agree, though, that reaching your full creative potential takes deliberate effort, even if that potential is inherited.

Such effort includes developing cognitive abilities (memory, attention, perception, language and problem-solving skills), emotional intelligence (perceiving, evaluating and managing your own and other people’s emotions), a positive attitude to creativity (especially confidence in your own abilities), an active social life (meeting people, taking part in events) and the right environment, one that stimulates creative thinking and gives it room to grow.

Can creativity be taught?

A number of studies show that specialised training can substantially increase creativity, and there are now hundreds of programmes that develop different aspects of creative thinking. They differ widely in content and structure, depending on their theoretical model (cognitive, social-personality or other), the activities they focus on (identifying problems, gathering and processing information, generating ideas) and the techniques they use (brainstorming, mind maps, free writing, games, cases, analogies, metaphors).

Systematic reviews show that the most effective programmes use cognitive models, focus on identifying problems, organising information and generating ideas, and work with real cases specific to the subject.

Which exercises stimulate creativity?

Creativity exercises were designed as early as the mid-twentieth century, with the first specialised training programmes, and their number has grown ever since. Robert Epstein systematised many of them through his generativity theory and its four core competencies of creativity.

The first group of exercises builds the skill of capturing ideas without judging them, with techniques that quiet critical thinking and relax body and mind. The second develops the skill of seeking out new challenges and facing the inevitable failures constructively. The third and fourth broaden our knowledge and experience and surround us with a rich, stimulating environment. Edward de Bono, Michael Michalko and Roger von Oech, among others, have also proposed collections of creativity exercises. Multiglyphs is one too: two minutes, one glyph, as many meanings as you can find.

How do you think laterally?

Lateral thinking was described by Edward de Bono in 1967 and is now one of the most popular methods of creative thinking. It uses a rich set of practical techniques to generate, deliberately, unconventional yet logically grounded ideas and solutions.

One of de Bono’s best-known techniques is the Six Thinking Hats: looking at a problem from different viewpoints in turn, each a hat of a different colour. The white hat stands for neutral facts; the red hat for intuition, gut reactions and emotions; the black hat for critical thinking and caution; the yellow hat for optimism; the green hat for challenging the status quo and generating new ideas; and the blue (“meta”) hat for managing the thinking process. CoRT is another popular lateral thinking toolkit, with sixty simple techniques in six groups.

What are the myths about creativity?

Several stereotypes about creativity are widespread. One is that drugs and alcohol boost it. Recent studies show the opposite: in the long run these substances harm creativity. Famous creative people who used them were creative because of many other factors, not because of the substances.

Another myth links creativity to mental illness, such as bipolar disorder or depression. Here too, studies show that although some creative people have antisocial traits (egocentrism, cynicism), such disorders are rare among them and unrelated to creative thinking. Other myths connect creativity with crime and antisocial behaviour, or with a difficult childhood.