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The ability to juxtapose ideas in a new and unusual way to find solutions to problems, create new inventions, or produce works of art.

Any human endeavor can involve creativity and is not limited to just the arts. Numerous theories of creativity were proposed by 20th-century psychologists, educators and other social scientists. Howard Gruber, who worked to understand creativity by studying the lives of famous innovators, found broad common characteristics:1) they engaged in a variety of activities within their chosen fields; 2) they held a strong sense of purpose about their work; 3) they had a profound emotional attachment to their work; and 4) they tended to conceptualize problems in terms of all encompassing images. Graham Wallas's 1962 study of well-known scientists and other innovators yielded a widely used four-stage breakdown of the creative process. The preparation stage consists of formulating a...