Reading time: 15 minutes · Key authors: Amabile · Csikszentmihalyi · De Bono · Scott, Leritz & Mumford · Egana-delSol · Torrance · Keywords: creativity · creative thinking · creativity training · higher education · intrinsic motivation · divergent thinking · pedagogical design · cognitive skills · creativity in the classroom · creative learning
There is a question that comes up almost every time at the start of a creativity course, phrased in different ways but carrying the same underlying doubt: “Why am I here if creativity is simply something you’re born with?”
It’s an understandable question. For decades, popular culture reinforced the idea that creativity was a gift reserved for artists, inventors, and exceptional geniuses. That Mozart composed because he was Mozart, that Edison invented because he was Edison, and that the rest of us should be content with following instructions. If you weren’t born creative, tough luck.
The problem is that idea is wrong. And science has been proving it for decades.
This article brings together the most relevant evidence on teaching creativity: what researchers say, how the creative learning process works, and what all of this means for educators and professionals who want to develop this skill seriously and methodically.
The Myth of Innate Talent and Why It Persists
Before discussing what we do know, it’s worth understanding why the myth of innate talent is so persistent.
The main reason is that creativity, when observed from the outside, appears spontaneous. We see the result — the work, the solution, the brilliant idea — but we don’t see the process that preceded it: years of practice, accumulated knowledge, failures, internalized patterns. What looks like sudden inspiration is, in most cases, the product of a long and trained process.
Edward de Bono, one of the most influential theorists in the field of lateral thinking, was categorical on this point: creativity is not a mystical quality, nor a matter of natural talent or temperament, but a skill that can be cultivated and developed (De Bono, 1990). This statement, far from being an isolated opinion, is backed by decades of empirical research.
Another factor feeding the myth is the confusion between two very different types of creativity. What researchers call Big-C — the creativity of Einstein, Beethoven, or Picasso — does involve unusual combinations of talent, context, and opportunity. But so-called little-c, the everyday creativity that allows people to solve problems, generate useful ideas, and think originally at work and in life, is accessible to anyone with the right tools and environment (Amabile, 2012). And it is precisely this second form of creativity that can — and should — be taught.
The Empirical Evidence: Creativity Training Programs Work
The question of whether creativity can be taught is not new. E. Paul Torrance, creator of the world’s most widely used creative thinking test (the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking, TTCT), asked himself this same question in the 1960s and spent decades answering it empirically (Torrance & Torrance, 1973).
The most compelling evidence comes from the meta-analysis by Scott, Leritz, and Mumford (2004), published in the Creativity Research Journal. The researchers conducted a quantitative review of available creativity training programs. Their abstract describes the findings precisely:
“Based on 70 prior studies, it was found that well-designed creativity training programs typically induce gains in performance with these effects generalizing across criteria, settings, and target populations. Moreover, these effects held when internal validity considerations were taken into account. An examination of the factors contributing to the relative effectiveness of these training programs indicated that more successful programs were likely to focus on development of cognitive skills and the heuristics involved in skill application, using realistic exercises appropriate to the domain at hand.”
In other words: well-designed creativity training programs produce measurable, replicable improvements, regardless of the context, evaluation criteria, or population studied. This is not a one-off or random effect.
The same authors published a second complementary study that year (Scott, Leritz, and Mumford, 2004b), in which they analyzed 156 training programs to identify which types of intervention are most effective. They found 11 common types of training, all with some value, but highlighted idea production training and cognitive training as particularly effective. This has a direct implication for pedagogical design: not every “creative” activity produces the same results — method matters.
Amabile’s Model: The Three Components That Can Be Developed
One of the most important theoretical contributions to understanding why creativity is teachable comes from Teresa Amabile, a researcher at Harvard. In her Componential Theory of Creativity, developed since 1983 and revised in subsequent publications, she defines creativity as “the production of ideas or outcomes that are both novel and appropriate to some goal” (Amabile, 2012, p. 1).
According to this theory, creativity arises from the confluence of four components:
- Domain-relevant skills: the knowledge, technical skills, and experience in a specific field. These include facts, principles, problem-solving paradigms, and specialized domain techniques.
- Creativity-relevant processes: a cognitive style and personality characteristics conducive to independence, risk-taking, and the ability to see problems from new perspectives, as well as skills for generating ideas. They include tolerance for ambiguity, self-discipline, and the ability to break out of habitual thinking “scripts.”
- Intrinsic motivation: passion for the task itself — genuine interest, enjoyment, and a personal sense of challenge — above and beyond external motivators such as rewards, evaluations, or supervision.
- The social environment: the component external to the individual. Amabile identified that certain environmental factors actively block creativity — norms of harsh criticism of new ideas, emphasis on the status quo, excessive pressure — while others stimulate it, such as freedom in carrying out work, collaborative teams, and supervisors who support the development of new ideas.
What makes this model especially useful for education is its direct implication: all four components can be addressed. Domain knowledge is acquired through study. Creative processes are trained through deliberate practice. Intrinsic motivation can be cultivated through environments that promote autonomy and appropriate challenge. And the educational environment can be deliberately designed to stimulate rather than suppress creativity.
Csikszentmihalyi: Creativity as a System, Not an Individual Trait
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, the psychologist known primarily for his concept of flow, offers another fundamental framework. For Csikszentmihalyi (1996), creativity is not just an individual mental process: it is the result of the interaction of a system composed of three elements — a culture with its rules and symbolic domains, a person who introduces novelty into that domain, and a field of experts who recognize and validate that innovation.
This systemic view has an important pedagogical consequence: creativity can be developed by working on any of its three dimensions. In the educational context, this means that designing learning conditions well — the environment, feedback, the level of challenge — is not an optional detail, but a constitutive part of the creative process itself.
His studies on flow in educational contexts further showed that students report more optimal experiences — and therefore greater creative disposition — when they face challenging tasks with immediate feedback, in environments that promote autonomy. The implication is clear: a teacher who designs working conditions well is, quite literally, fostering the creativity of their students.
Evidence in a Latin American Context: The Acciona Program in Chile
A particularly relevant study for the Spanish-speaking context is that of Egana-delSol (2023), published in npj Science of Learning (Nature), which evaluated the impact of the Acciona program in Chile — an initiative of arts workshops in public schools created in 2007 by the National Council for Culture and the Arts, in collaboration with the Ministry of Education and the Balmaceda Arte Joven Foundation.
The study’s abstract notes that the program was designed to improve the effectiveness of formal education through the quality of artistic and cultural education, with the goal of developing students’ creative skills. The results showed positive correlations between participation in the program and academic achievement, measured levels of creativity, and peer relationships.
This study is significant for two reasons. First, because it demonstrates that the positive effects of teaching creativity are not exclusive to Anglo-Saxon educational systems: they are replicable in Latin American contexts with their own distinct characteristics. Second, because it confirms that a structured program — with clear objectives, competent professionals, and deliberate methodology — produces results that a traditional curriculum does not produce on its own.
Evidence of Creative Learning in Higher Education
González-Zamar and Abad-Segura (2019), in a systematic review published in REencuentro. Análisis de Problemas Universitarios, analyzed creativity specifically in the university context. Their abstract is direct:
“Creativity is a fundamental component of intelligence in young people for adaptation, problem solving and decision making. Fostering creativity in education allows to increase both the collaborative and autonomous and self-critical abilities of the student. […] The results demonstrate the need for an educational system where creative learning prevails.”
The authors conclude that students are creative at different levels and that the acquisition of creative competencies is key both for the individual and for their future professional integration. This review also confirms the existing gap: creativity appears mentioned in university graduate profiles, but is rarely addressed in an explicit and methodological way in the actual curriculum.
Benveniste and Creativity Training: The Scale of the Field
To put the relevance of the topic into perspective, Benveniste (2022), in an article published in the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, offers a global view:
“Creativity is a major source of innovation, growth, adaptability, and resilience, making it a top priority of governments, global corporations, kindergarten-through-professional educational institutions, and other organizations and individuals who collectively invest hundreds of millions of dollars annually into training in divergent thinking and related practices.”
The fact that governments, corporations, and educational institutions worldwide invest hundreds of millions of dollars annually in creativity training is not a minor detail: it reflects a broad consensus — beyond academia — that creativity is a skill that responds to deliberate intervention.
The Teacher’s Role: From Content Transmitter to Designer of Creative Environments
All of this evidence points toward a rethinking of the teaching role. Teaching creativity does not mean “inspiring” students with motivational speeches, nor giving total freedom and waiting for things to “flow.” It is rigorous work that combines theoretical knowledge, pedagogical design, and environmental management.
Research on creative teachers points to a specific profile: they are methodical and flexible at the same time, capable of clearly communicating the objectives of the learning process, of transforming information so that students engage with it from an active perspective, and of posing open-ended problems without sacrificing rigor. They are not passive facilitators waiting for something interesting to happen. They are deliberate designers of learning experiences.
This means, among other things, knowing when to provide structure and when to give freedom, how to evaluate creative processes without falling into subjectivity, and how to sustain students’ intrinsic motivation over time. According to Amabile’s model (2012), the environment a teacher creates — including the type of feedback they provide, the degree of autonomy they allow, and their attitude toward error — can both stimulate and suppress creativity, regardless of the students’ talent.
Creativity Blockers That the Educational System Perpetuates
Understanding that creativity is teachable also means recognizing what blocks it. Several of the most common obstacles are not individual but systemic.
Fear of failure is probably the most powerful. An environment that penalizes mistakes — through punitive grades, comparisons, or unconstructive criticism — trains students to avoid risk. And risk avoidance is incompatible with creative thinking. Amabile (2012) identified that norms of harsh criticism of new ideas are one of the environmental factors that most consistently suppress creativity in organizational and educational contexts.
Overvaluing the single correct answer is another major obstacle. Many educational systems are designed to find the “right” answer to problems that already have a known solution. Creative thinking, on the other hand, requires exactly the opposite: the ability to generate multiple possible responses to open-ended problems, to question assumptions, and to reframe the problem itself. Scott et al. (2004) found that the most effective training programs are precisely those that work these cognitive processes explicitly.
The absence of deliberate practice is the third obstacle. Like any complex skill, creativity does not develop through sporadic exposure. It requires sustained practice, feedback, and time. A one-day workshop or an inspirational talk has limited and transient effects. What the research shows is that programs that produce lasting change are those that include realistic exercises, appropriate to the domain, with repeated practice of the cognitive processes involved (Scott et al., 2004).
How Long Does It Take to Become More Creative?
A practical question that inevitably arises is how long it takes to develop creativity in a meaningful way. The honest answer is: it depends on the starting point, the method, and consistency. But research offers useful benchmarks.
The meta-analysis by Scott et al. (2004) found measurable improvements in training programs ranging from a few weeks to several months, with the most effective being those that integrated realistic practical exercises with discussion of the underlying cognitive processes. This does not mean that after that time a person becomes a creative genius, but that their capacities for generating original ideas, thinking flexibly, and seeing non-obvious connections increase in a statistically significant way.
What does become clear, both from Amabile’s componential theory and from program effectiveness studies, is that episodic training has limited effects. Creativity develops like any other complex skill: with deliberate practice, feedback, and enough time for new thinking patterns to consolidate.
What This Means for Educators and Professionals
If creativity can be taught — and the accumulated evidence indicates it can — then there are concrete consequences for both those who teach and those who want to develop this skill in themselves.
For educators, it means that creativity can no longer remain a vague curriculum objective. It requires intentional design: clear goals, structured activities, specific techniques, coherent evaluation criteria, and a classroom environment that allows for error, experimentation, and reflection. González-Zamar and Abad-Segura (2019) are explicit in noting that the gap between the declared importance of creativity in university study plans and its actual presence in the classroom is one of the most pressing problems in contemporary higher education.
For professionals who want to develop their own creativity, the implication is equally direct: it is not about waiting for inspiration or “unlocking” something supposedly lying dormant. It is about acquiring knowledge in the domain of interest, practicing creative thinking techniques regularly, and creating the conditions — of time, concentration, and appropriate challenge — for the process to occur in a sustained way.
In both cases, the starting point is the same: understanding that creativity is a skill, not a gift. And skills, by definition, are learned.
Conclusion: The Question Is Not Whether It Can Be Taught, but How to Do It Well
The question of whether creativity can be taught has an answer in the research. The meta-analysis by Scott et al. (2004) across 70 studies, Amabile’s componential theory (2012), Csikszentmihalyi’s systemic framework (1996), the results of the Acciona program in Chile (Egana-delSol, 2023), and the systematic review by González-Zamar and Abad-Segura (2019) all point in the same direction: creativity is a complex but developable skill, one that responds to training, improves with deliberate practice, and depends greatly on the conditions of the environment.
The relevant question now is a different one: how do we teach it well?
That requires method. It requires knowing the theoretical frameworks that explain how creative thinking works. It requires mastering the techniques that stimulate it. It requires understanding which conditions favor and which block the creative process. And it requires the willingness to apply all of this rigorously, whether in the classroom, in the work team, or in one’s own personal learning process.
That is exactly what a serious creativity training program should offer: not inspiration, but method.
References
Amabile, T. M. (2012). Componential theory of creativity (Working Paper No. 12-096). Harvard Business School. https://www.hbs.edu/ris/Publication%20Files/12-096.pdf
Benveniste, M. (2022). A new method for training creativity: Narrative as an alternative to divergent thinking. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1512(1), 29–47. https://doi.org/10.1111/nyas.14763
Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1996). Creativity: Flow and the psychology of discovery and invention. HarperCollins.
De Bono, E. (1990). Lateral thinking: A textbook of creativity. Penguin Books.
Egana-delSol, P. (2023). The impacts of a high-school art-based program on academic achievements, creativity, and creative behaviors. npj Science of Learning, 8, 39. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41539-023-00187-6
González-Zamar, M.-D., & Abad-Segura, E. (2019). Evidencias del aprendizaje creativo en la educación superior. REencuentro. Análisis de Problemas Universitarios, 30(77), 111–132. https://www.redalyc.org/journal/340/34065218007/html/
Scott, G., Leritz, L. E., & Mumford, M. D. (2004a). The effectiveness of creativity training: A quantitative review. Creativity Research Journal, 16(4), 361–388. https://doi.org/10.1080/10400410409534549
Scott, G., Leritz, L. E., & Mumford, M. D. (2004b). Types of creativity training: Approaches and their effectiveness. The Journal of Creative Behavior, 38(3), 149–179. https://doi.org/10.1002/j.2162-6057.2004.tb01238.x
Torrance, E. P., & Torrance, J. P. (1973). Is creativity teachable? Phi Delta Kappa Educational Foundation.