Skip to main content
Category: Thinking
Type: Cognitive Framework
Origin: Wallas, The Art of Thought, 1926; Guilford, 1950; OECD PISA, 2022
Also known as: Creative cognition, little-c creativity, generative thinking
Quick Answer — Creative Thinking is the skill of generating, evaluating, and improving ideas so they are both original and useful. Wallas mapped the process in 1926; Guilford made creativity a research problem in 1950; OECD later treated it as a teachable competence. The working insight is simple: a wild idea is not yet creative work. The work is the fit.

​
What is Creative Thinking?

Creative Thinking is the competence to produce ideas that are new and fit for purpose, then to test and improve them until they do a job.
The competence to engage productively in the generation, evaluation and improvement of ideas that can result in original and effective solutions, advances in knowledge and impactful expressions of imagination.
That is how the OECD defined Creative Thinking for PISA 2022. It is narrower than “creativity” as a life story or a genius brand. It names three moves you can practice: generate, evaluate, improve. Runco and Jaeger’s 2012 standard definition of creativity supplies the two tests those moves must pass: originality and effectiveness. Novelty without use is noise. Use without novelty is routine. The everyday picture is leftover rice. Following last week’s recipe is competent. Stirring ketchup into coffee is original. Frying the rice with what is actually in the fridge, tasting, and adjusting the salt is Creative Thinking. Divergent thinking is the first burst of options. Convergent thinking is the later cut. Creative Thinking has to do both, then go back and raise the idea that survived. Analytical thinking takes a tangle apart and names the joints. Creative Thinking reassembles those pieces—or pieces from another room—into a pattern that did not exist yet. Lateral thinking is one method for jumping the old path. It is not the whole skill.

​
Creative Thinking in 3 Depths

  • Beginner: Do not stop at the first idea, and do not keep every idea. The everyday cue is a meal from leftovers, a gift under a budget, or a sentence that is clever but does not answer the question.
  • Practitioner: Split the hour. Generate without scoring; then score for novelty and fit; then change one thing and test again. A three-column list—ideas, what is new, what job they do—beats a longer brainstorm dump.
  • Advanced: Creative Thinking is not a personality. Amabile’s model needs domain skill, idea-generation processes, and motivation. OECD treats the skill as malleable. The failure mode is worshipping surprise while skipping the check that the surprise works.

​
Origin

Creative Thinking began as a description of how new thoughts arrive, not as a workplace slogan. In 1926, Graham Wallas published The Art of Thought. He split a new idea into four stages he could name: preparation, incubation, illumination, and verification. Helmholtz and Poincaré had already described sudden insight after hard, fruitless work. Wallas added the last stage on purpose. A happy idea still has to be checked and put into exact form. Classroom and lab language arrived later. In 1950, J. P. Guilford used his APA presidential address, published in American Psychologist, to say that psychologists had neglected creativity. He argued that IQ tests measured finding one right answer and missed the ability to produce many. His later Structure of Intellect work made divergent production a measurable factor. That is the ancestor of divergent thinking, not a license to skip evaluation. In 2001, Lorin Anderson and David Krathwohl recast Bloom’s taxonomy. Create—generate, plan, produce—sat at the top of the cognitive-process list: put elements together into a new whole. In 2022, OECD’s PISA assessment treated Creative Thinking as a competence 15-year-olds can show in everyday tasks, not only in art class. Results published in 2024 put the OECD mean near 33 points; about one in two OECD students reached Level 4, original and diverse ideas on simple everyday problems. The name now travels as a job skill. The World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report 2023 ranked Creative Thinking second among core skills, just behind analytical thinking. The 2025 report still lists it among the top core skills—fourth in that survey—and among the skills expected to keep rising through 2030. That is demand. The definition is still generate, evaluate, improve, under the two tests of new and useful.

​
Key Points

Creative Thinking earns its keep when the old answer is stale and a new one must still work. It fails when you confuse surprise with a finished product.
1

Demand novelty and usefulness together

Ask two questions of every candidate: what is new here, and what job does it do? A slogan that only startles has failed the second test. A tweak that only copies last year’s plan has failed the first. Runco and Jaeger’s pair is the filter. If you cannot name both, you do not yet have Creative Thinking. You have a mood.
2

Separate generation from evaluation, then rejoin them

Guilford was right that the first pass should produce many. OECD was right that the skill includes evaluation and improvement. Brainstorming is one way to delay the critic. It is not the whole afternoon. After the list, score, combine, and change one variable. Divergent thinking without a return pass is a pile, not a product.
3

Load the domain before you hunt for leaps

Teresa Amabile’s 1983 componential model treats domain-relevant skill as fuel, not as the enemy of imagination. A person who does not know adhesives will not invent a reusable note. Analogical thinking still needs something real on both sides of the analogy. Preparation is Wallas’s first stage for a reason. Empty novelty is cheap.
4

Treat the environment as part of the method

Silver could present a “failed” glue because 3M ran internal seminars. Fry could borrow it because the idea was still in the building. Motivation drops when every new move is punished. Constraints can help—budget, materials, a real user—so long as they do not freeze the first draft as the only draft.

​
Applications

Use Creative Thinking when you need a new option that still has to survive contact with a real constraint. Do not use it as a license to skip the brief.

Turn an open assignment into generate-then-fit

If the prompt says create or propose, do not hand in the first clever angle. List five framings, mark which are new, and keep the one that still answers the question. Early-career work gets cleaner when originality is visible and the rubric is met.

Replace 'any idea' meetings with a two-pass workshop

Spend twenty minutes on quantity. Then score for novelty and for a job the customer, patient, or budget actually has. Change the winner once and test it. A wall of stickies with no second pass is theatre, not Creative Thinking.

Cook the week from what is already in the house

Name the constraint first: time, leftover rice, a child who will not eat spice. Generate two or three plates, taste, and adjust. Family planning works the same way: new Saturday plans still have to fit sleep, money, and who can drive.

Offer policy options, not a single slogan

“We should innovate” is a blob. Generate two or three mechanisms, say who they help, and name one way they could fail. Voters and boards can then improve the option. A novel slogan with no mechanism is not yet a public idea.

​
Case Study

The numbered public window onto Creative Thinking is 3M’s Post-it Notes—not a claim that one choir bookmark is the whole of innovation. In 1968, 3M chemist Spencer Silver was trying to improve acrylate adhesives. He produced a low-tack glue of tiny acrylic spheres: strong enough to hold paper, weak enough to let the sheets part without tearing. It was a poor answer to “make a stronger tape.” Silver kept presenting it. 3M’s own history has him nicknamed Mr. Persistent. In 1974, colleague Art Fry, singing in a church choir, was tired of scrap-paper bookmarks falling out of the hymnal. He remembered Silver’s adhesive. The first use was a bookmark. Internal traffic then shifted the product: people wrote on the notes, stuck questions on reports, and stuck answers back. Novelty met a job. A 1977 test in four cities under the name Press ’n Peel was lukewarm. People did not buy what they had not handled. A later sampling campaign in Boise, Idaho—the Boise Blitz—put pads in users’ hands. Ninety percent of those who tried the notes said they would buy them, according to 3M’s product history. In 1980, the notes launched across the United States as Post-it Notes. Boundary note: this is little-c product work inside a firm that already knew adhesives and allowed a “failed” material to stay visible. The eureka did not ship itself. Evaluation, sampling, and a renamed job—from bookmark to note—were the improvement step. Creative Thinking here is the whole chain, not the sermon.

​
Boundaries and Failure Modes

Creative Thinking fails when domain knowledge is missing. You can generate original medical advice and still harm someone. Amabile’s first component is not optional. In safety-critical work, verification has to be heavier than the illumination that preceded it. It also fails when the environment punishes every unfinished idea, or when “be creative” is used to erase a real constraint. A budget, a law, or a patient’s limit is often the frame that makes a new fit possible. Design thinking is a reminder that the user, not the cleverness, is the test. The common misuse is idea generation as delay. You keep listing so you never have to choose. Wallas’s verification is the brake. Another misuse is to treat any artsy tone as Creative Thinking, or to call divergent thinking the whole skill. Quantity is a phase. Fit is the point.

​
Common Misconceptions

The English name collides with art class, with brainstorming, and with talent myths.
Painting can be one arena. So can a routing change, a leftover meal, or a clearer form for a public office. OECD built PISA tasks in written and visual expression and in social and scientific problem-solving. The skill is new-and-useful ideas, not a medium.
That is the divergent pass. Guilford measured it because tests had ignored it. OECD’s definition still includes evaluation and improvement. A longer list that never meets a job is not Creative Thinking. Convergent thinking is part of the same competence, not its enemy.
Wallas described stages you can schedule. Amabile treated processes and motivation as trainable. OECD calls the competence malleable and assessable in 15-year-olds. Uneven talent exists. It does not follow that practice is pointless.
These pages sit next to the same problem: how to get a new idea without losing the job the idea had to do.

Divergent Thinking

Generates many options. Creative Thinking uses that pass, then asks which options are also useful.

Convergent Thinking

Narrows options toward a workable answer. The second half of Creative Thinking depends on it.

Lateral Thinking

A method for leaving the old path. One tool inside Creative Thinking, not a synonym for it.

Design Thinking

Tests new ideas against a user’s actual need. Empathy and prototypes are one way to check fit.

Analytical Thinking

Names parts and joints. Creative Thinking often starts from that map, then rebuilds it.

Analogical Thinking

Imports a pattern from another domain. A common engine for novelty that still has to pass a usefulness test.

​
One-Line Takeaway

Do not trust a wild idea on charm: generate more than one, keep only what is new and useful, and change it until it does the job.