Understanding Creativity

Creativity has become highly valued in all aspects of life. Several decades ago the debate about creativity centered on whether creativity could be enhanced, or if it was something you were born with. Now researchers seem to be consistently proclaiming that it can. But the results are far from uniform. Even the programs with the most consistent record fail far too often to instill confidence, and other, often very popular programs, have a dismal record. From Creative Problem Solving to the Purdue Creative Thinking program, and from de Bono Thinking to Synectics and TRIZ. Which has the best record? Why? Why are they not more consistent? Are there other approaches that might improve these creative cognition enhancement approaches? This review uncovered those questions, and while it doesn’t propose to present answers, it does attempt to point the way for future research to shed a little more light on the mysteries of creativity. It also proposes that all of these fragmented results may make a little more sense – and may begin to look like pieces of one whole, rather than discrete, conflicting data points – under the light of a Complexity Theory of Creativity.