Where Does Creativity Come From? Key Influences on Innovation

Creativity rarely strikes out of thin air. Behind every breakthrough idea – a new teaching method, a groundbreaking product, or a novel solution to an old problem – is a complex set of psychological and cognitive factors working together. Researchers have spent decades trying to map these factors, and what they’ve found is revealing: creativity is not a single gift that some people have and others don’t. It emerges from identifiable sources, and understanding them can help educators, students, and professionals actively cultivate it. Four of the most well-researched sources are intellectual abilities, cognitive styles, personality traits, and motivation.

Intellectual abilities: the cognitive engine of creativity 🔗

When psychologists study creativity, they consistently return to a cluster of intellectual abilities that underpin creative thought. Three stand out most clearly: problem-finding, divergent thinking, and insight.

Problem-finding 🔗

Research published in Frontiers in Psychology describes creativity as not just the ability to solve problems with ill-defined answers, but also the capacity to identify problematic aspects of a situation – and in a wider sense, to define entirely new problems. This is what problem-finding means. Most people wait for a problem to present itself; creative individuals actively look for gaps, tensions, and unasked questions. In education and research, this ability is what drives inquiry and innovation from the ground up.

Divergent thinking 🔗

Divergent thinking is the most widely studied intellectual ability in creativity research. According to cognitive psychologist J. P. Guilford, divergent thinking involves a matrix of intellectual abilities including fluency (generating multiple solutions), flexibility (processing different possibilities simultaneously), originality (producing new ideas), and elaboration (developing ideas in rich detail). Unlike convergent thinking, which moves toward a single correct answer, divergent thinking is non-linear and spontaneous, exploring many possible directions in a short time and drawing unexpected connections between them.

It is worth noting that divergent and convergent thinking are not opposites in practice. A 2025 study in Thinking and Reasoning found that individuals who generate numerous unique and detailed ideas are also more adept at evaluating and selecting the best ones – suggesting that both modes of thinking work together in genuinely creative output.

Insight 🔗

Insight refers to those sudden moments of clarity when a solution or connection appears that wasn’t available through deliberate reasoning alone. Wallas’s classic four-stage model captures this well: preparation, incubation, illumination (the insight moment), and verification. Modern neuroscience has expanded on this, showing that creative insight involves dynamic interactions across multiple brain networks – the default mode network generates spontaneous associations, while the executive attention network evaluates and refines them. Insight is not random; it typically follows a period of deep engagement with a domain.

Cognitive styles: how you prefer to think shapes how you create 🔗

Beyond what you’re capable of thinking, how you prefer to approach problems plays a significant role in shaping your creativity. The most influential framework here is Kirton’s Adaption-Innovation Theory (KAI), developed by psychologist Michael Kirton in 1976.

Adaptors vs. innovators 🔗

Kirton’s theory is built on a simple but powerful observation: all people are creative, but they create in different ways. As Kirton described it, adaptors prefer to “do things better” – they work within existing structures, seek consensus, and favour tried-and-tested methods to improve on current approaches. Innovators, by contrast, prefer to “do things differently” – they challenge existing frameworks, redefine problems, and are comfortable venturing beyond established norms.

Kirton himself emphasised that neither style is superior – both are genuinely creative, and both are necessary for complex problem-solving. Organisations and classrooms that value only one style lose the strengths of the other. Innovators tend to thrive under pressure and in uncertain situations; adaptors excel at systematic improvement and precision. Crucially, he identified a third group – “bridges” – individuals who can link and mediate between the two styles for optimal collaborative outcomes.

Research conducted with polytechnic students in Singapore found that innovators showed significantly higher openness to experience and were more likely to take risks and adopt mastery goals, while adaptors were more conscientious and inclined toward risk avoidance. These findings have clear implications for how educators design learning environments – a classroom that rewards only structured, convergent approaches will systematically suppress innovative cognitive styles.

Personality traits: the stable foundations of creative behaviour 🔗

Some of the most consistent predictors of creativity are not cognitive at all – they are personality traits. Two in particular stand out from the research literature.

Openness to experience 🔗

Openness to experience is one of the Big Five personality traits, and it is the one most consistently linked to creative achievement. It encompasses intellectual curiosity, imaginative thinking, a preference for variety, and sensitivity to aesthetic experiences. A study published in PMC found that openness to experience, along with the executive function of updating (the ability to monitor and revise information in working memory), explained a meaningful share of the relationship between intelligence and creativity. In short, people high in openness are not just more willing to encounter new ideas – they actively seek them out, which feeds directly into creative output.

The connection between openness and innovator-style thinking is also well-established. Research on the KAI and Big Five traits confirmed that innovators are significantly more open to experience than adaptors, while adaptors score higher on conscientiousness. These are not value judgements – they are complementary profiles, both necessary for teams and institutions to function creatively.

Willingness to take risks 🔗

Closely tied to openness is risk tolerance. Creative ideas are, by definition, departures from the known – and departing from the known carries the possibility of failure. Studies show that creative individuals don’t let the possibility of being wrong prevent them from trying. This isn’t recklessness; it’s a calibrated acceptance that innovation requires testing ideas whose success is not guaranteed. Risk tolerance is especially important in educational settings, where the fear of wrong answers can shut down exploratory thinking entirely. When classrooms reward only correct answers, they inadvertently penalise the very cognitive behaviour that leads to creative breakthroughs.

Motivation: the fuel that makes creativity happen 🔗

You can have the intellectual abilities, the cognitive style, and the personality profile for creativity – but without motivation, none of it leads to creative output. Amabile’s landmark research made this point plainly: individuals may have traits and abilities favourable to creativity, but whether these actually result in creative achievement depends on their motivation. The distinction between two types of motivation is central here.

Intrinsic motivation 🔗

Intrinsic motivation arises from within – from genuine interest in a task, the satisfaction of doing it well, and the desire for self-expression. Research in ScienceDirect’s learning journal links intrinsic motivation closely to Csikszentmihalyi’s concept of “flow” – the state of deep engagement that arises when a task is optimally challenging. Most creativity theorists agree that intrinsic motivation is the most reliable driver of creative work. When people pursue ideas they genuinely care about, they persist longer, explore more deeply, and tolerate ambiguity better. A study published in Frontiers in Psychology found a strong and significant positive relationship between intrinsic motivation and creative and innovative performance – the higher the intrinsic motivation, the higher the creative output.

Extrinsic motivation 🔗

Extrinsic motivation comes from outside the task – grades, deadlines, rewards, social recognition. The relationship between extrinsic motivation and creativity is more nuanced than it might initially appear. Early research suggested that extrinsic rewards consistently undermined creativity by redirecting attention from the work itself to the reward. However, Amabile later refined this view, distinguishing between two types of extrinsic motivators: informational (such as constructive feedback, which can deepen engagement and confirm competence) and controlling (such as surveillance and strict deadlines, which tend to undermine autonomy). Informational extrinsic motivation can work synergistically with intrinsic motivation – supporting rather than replacing it. Controlling extrinsic motivation, on the other hand, is more likely to dampen creative thinking.

This distinction has direct relevance for teaching. A teacher who provides meaningful feedback that helps a student grow is supporting creative motivation. A teacher who motivates primarily through grades and competition may be working against it.

How these sources work together 🔗

It’s important to see these four sources – intellectual abilities, cognitive styles, personality, and motivation – not as separate boxes, but as interacting components. Sternberg and Lubart’s investment theory of creativity captures this well: creativity requires intellectual abilities, knowledge, thinking styles, personality, motivation, and environment working in concert. No single factor is sufficient on its own. A person with high divergent thinking but low intrinsic motivation may never act on their ideas. An innovator with high risk tolerance but no domain knowledge will struggle to produce genuinely valuable work. And an individual with strong intrinsic motivation but a purely adaptive cognitive style may improve existing systems without ever questioning whether a better system is possible.

For educators in particular, this interacting model has practical value. It suggests that nurturing creativity is not about finding “creative students” – it’s about designing environments that develop divergent thinking skills, respect different cognitive styles, cultivate openness, reward appropriate risk-taking, and protect the space for intrinsic motivation to flourish.

What do you think? If intrinsic motivation is such a consistent driver of creativity, how can educational environments be restructured to prioritise genuine curiosity over performance metrics? And given that both adaptive and innovative cognitive styles are valid forms of creativity, how might teachers design tasks that draw out the strengths of both types of learners in the same classroom?

References

1. https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.00134/full
2. https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/health-and-medicine/creativity-and-intelligence
3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divergent_thinking
4. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13546783.2025.2485059
5. https://www.cogn-iq.org/learn/theory/creativity/
6. https://www.regent.edu/journal/emerging-leadership-journeys/kirton-adaption-innovation/
7. https://www.businessballs.com/change-management/kirtons-adaptation-innovation-theory/
8. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ811071.pdf
9. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4175011/
10. https://www.academia.edu/24054738/The_factor_structure_and_construct_validity_of_the_Kirton_adaption_innovation_inventory
11. https://study.com/academy/lesson/creativity-and-divergent-thinking.html
12. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10400410701841955
13. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1871187117303528
14. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6369195/
15. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/297762892_Intrinsic_motivation_and_creativity_Opening_up_a_black_box