What is creative thinking?
Creative thinking is the process which we use when we come up with a new idea. It is the merging of ideas which have not been merged before. Brainstorming is one form of creative thinking: it works by merging someone else's ideas with your own to create a new one.
This creative thinking process can be accidental or deliberate.
Without using special techniques creative thinking does still occur, but usually in the accidental
Using special techniques, deliberate creative thinking can be used to develop new ideas. These techniques force the mergance of a wide range of ideas to spark off new thoughts and processes. Brainstorming is one of these special techniques, but traditionally it starts with unoriginal ideas. way; like a chance happening making you think about something in a different way and you then discovering a beneficial change. Other changes happen slowly through pure use of intelligence and logical progression. Using this accidental or logical progression process, it often takes a long time for products to develop and improve. In an accelerating and competitive world this is obviously disadvantageous.
(more information at http://www.brainstorming.co.uk/tutorials/creativethinking.html)
Basically, creativity requires the whole brain to think where the right brain for imagination, artistry and intuition and the left brain for logic and planning. A study by George Land reveals that we are naturally creative and as we grow up we learn to be uncreative. Creativity is a skill that can be developed and a process that can be handled. Generative research shows that everyone has creative abilities. Its just a matter of training. The more training you have and the more diverse the training, the greater potential for creative output.
Research has shown that in creativity quantity equals quality. The longer the list of ideas, the higher the quality the final solution. The highest quality ideas appear at the end of the list.
(http://www.creativityatwork.com/articlesContent/whatis.htm)
