Generating possibilities
Considering several responses instead of immediately settling on the first. This divergent thinking opens up possible solutions.
Understand your strengths
Creative intelligence: understanding and assessing your strengths
Creative intelligence is real: it enables people to develop original, relevant responses and improve them to meet the demands of a situation.
It appears in the arts, but also in science, work and everyday life. Finding a new way to explain something, designing a project or solving a problem can draw on this intelligence.
Abilities that support creative thinking
Changing perspective
Moving beyond a familiar way of framing a problem, making unexpected connections and exploring other approaches.
Offering an original idea
Producing a response that is new in the relevant context. A creative idea need not be a world first to be valuable.
Evaluating and improving
Choosing ideas that genuinely address the need, identifying their limitations and refining them. Creativity combines exploration with judgement.
Why speak of creative intelligence?
Some situations require more than retrieving a known answer: they call for a new response. Drawing on knowledge, reframing a problem and inventing a relevant solution are intelligent activities. Originality alone is not enough: the idea must also make sense or have value in its context.
The term “creative intelligence” features in Robert Sternberg’s theory of successful intelligence. Other research uses “creativity” or “creative thinking”. This research illuminates the abilities involved in generating and developing original, relevant ideas.
The assessment of creative thinking in PISA illustrates that these abilities can be studied in a structured way. It does not demonstrate that they form an intelligence entirely independent of all others; it supports their value as a dimension worth exploring.
Artistic creativity and problem-solving
Artistic creativity expresses an idea, emotion or distinctive perspective through writing, composing, drawing or performance. Creative problem-solving involves inventing a method, tool, arrangement or explanation that works. These two pathways can overlap.
A person may be highly creative in one area and less so in another. Knowledge, experience, motivation and opportunities in the environment play important roles.
Does IQ capture all of creativity?
IQ tests assess abilities that can support creativity, such as reasoning, knowledge and working memory. But they are not designed to provide a complete profile of original idea generation, elaboration and creative accomplishments.
Cognitive intelligence and creative intelligence are two different forms of intelligence. An IQ score alone therefore cannot reveal a person’s creative strengths. It is equally inaccurate to treat creativity as unrelated to cognition.
How can creative intelligence be assessed?
Assessment can combine idea-generation or production tasks, analysis of originality and relevance, and an interview about activities and projects. Depending on age and the question being explored, standardised creativity measures may add information.
A Creative Quotient (CQ) can summarise performance on a standardised creativity assessment and place the abilities measured in relation to the test’s reference group. It provides a useful guide, complemented by analysis of the different components and areas of expression.
What about exceptional creative potential?
High Creative Potential refers to particularly strong creative abilities. It can appear as a wealth of ideas, an ability to shift perspectives and a capacity to devise original, relevant solutions.
Recognising your High Creative Potential helps you understand how you think, make sense of your experiences and identify areas in which your talents can flourish. Assessment clarifies these strengths through observations and measures, connecting them with concrete projects and opportunities.
Developing your strengths
Exploring different areas, building knowledge, recording ideas and giving them time to develop can support creativity. Alternating exploration with selection, accepting imperfect attempts and finding a supportive environment help turn an insight into a finished result.
Understand your profile better
Describe your questions and what you would like to explore. We can clarify which assessment would suit your concerns.
