Creative thinking ability: A hybrid systematic literature review and bibliometric analysis

This study explores the development of creative thinking ability over the past few decades using a interdisciplinary approach in a global context. Various studies have investigated creative thinking ability over the past several decades, but the search is still fragmented in each field. Therefore, there is a significant gap in our understanding of how these concepts of creative thinking overlap and interact across disciplines. So that, in-depth research on this subject remains necessary. This study is a systematic literature review (SLR) and bibliometric analysis of creative thinking ability based on empirical studies that have been conducted. The methodology used in this study is a systematic literature review using term “creative thinking ability” in the article title, abstract, and keywords from the Scopus database, resulting in 4,487 publications from 1968 to 2025. The evaluation was conducted on January 5, 2026. The collected data were analyzed bibliometrically using the VOS (visualization of similarities) viewer. This study found that creative thinking intersects various disciplines, including psychology, education, and business, which holistically intersect with the cognitive dimension, the affective dimension, and the socio-cultural dimension. In psychology, an individual’s creative capacity can be optimized through cognitive stimulation aligned with their personality characteristics. In the business sector, a climate of innovation is encouraged through structured training programs adaptively designed based on employee perceptions and needs. Meanwhile, in the educational context, students’ creativity can be effectively cultivated through the implementation of transformative learning models supported by practical instructional strategies in the classroom. By integrating insights from these fields, it will be able to improve educational practices and foster a conducive environment for creativity that can lead to innovative teaching strategies. So that educational institutions can prepare students to design innovative solutions to address various pressing global challenges, in line with sustainable development goals (SDGs).