Creative potential and its measurement
Creativity has received increasing attention over the past decades. It is viewed as a valuable
asset for individuals in their daily problem solving and their professional careers. Organizations seek
creative ideas to improve themselves and stay competitive. Societies benefit from creativity in terms
of social and technical improvements in quality of life and cultural development. Recent surveys rank
creativity among the most sought-after characteristics; for example, an IBM worldwide survey of
1541 CEOs in sixty countries and thirty-three major industries found creativity to be the most
valuable ability for future top managers (Berman & Korsten, 2010). An ADOBE survey of 2000
teachers (K-12) and 2000 parents in the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, and Australia
found creativity as a highly desired educational goal (ADOBE, 2013). Creativity is one of the four
key “21st century skills”, together with critical thinking, collaboration, and communication
(http://p21.org). Creativity can be defined as the ability to produce original work that fits with the
context and responds to task constraints (Sternberg & Lubart, 1995). Compared to classical
intelligence, which focuses on analytic ability, knowledge and expert resolution of familiar problems
with known solutions, creativity concerns generating new, previously unknown ideas and behaviours
in novel situations or treating familiar situations in new ways (Sternberg, 1985; Lubart et al., 2003).
Whereas intellectual ability results typically in academic success, creative ability is best manifested in
unique accomplishments, recognized as valuable in a domain-based context.
The concept of creative potential
An important distinction can be made between potential and talent. Gagné (2004) in his
Differentiated Model of Giftedness and Talent (DMGT) notes that giftedness designates outstanding
abilities, called aptitudes whereas talent is linked to achievement and designates the outstanding
mastery of systematically developed abilities, called competencies (knowledge and skills). In this
vein, potential refers to a latent state which may be considered part of an individual’s “human capital”
(Walberg, 1988), as well as a resource for the person’s larger social group or society. This potential
may be put to use if a person has the opportunity. The individual may be aware of his/her potential or
may be blind to it. Each person can be described as having more or less potential in a domain of work,
and more specifically, in a given task.
The degree to which an individual shows different levels of potential across domains and tasks
depends on the nature of the required cognitive and conative factors that are involved in each task; for
example, making a creative still-life drawing and a creative collage most probably call upon similar
factors. In comparison, there is potentially less similarity between a still-life drawing and poetry
ICIE/LPI
42 International Journal for Talent Development and Creativity – 1(2), December, 2013.
composition, each task involving a somewhat specific set of factors. The degree to which tasks are
similar can be estimated by correlational studies, in which people complete the two tasks and then
shared variance is calculated; however, additional methods allow a fine-grained task analysis in order
to specify the precise resources involved in a task (see Caroff & Lubart, 2012).
The extent of task similarity concerns the nature of factors solicited in each task, the extent to
which each factor is solicited, and the way in which the factors come into play during task execution.
Thus, if two tasks involve metaphorical thinking, there is some degree of similarity between the tasks.
If this metaphorical thinking is involved to the same extent in each task, and comes into play in the
same way during task execution, the similarity will be enhanced. Given that each task may be
characterized as partially similar to other tasks and partially specific, it is most useful to conceive a
person’s creative potential in terms of a set of potentialities. An individual may show high potential in
scriptwriting, average potential in poetry composition and low potential in graphic design. This
heterogeneity is normal (Lubart & Guignard, 2004). Indeed, in studies of general population samples,
it is common to observe relatively low correlations between creativity scores in tasks from different
domains (Baer, 1993). In studies of eminent creators, it was found that high levels of creativity in
several lines of work in a domain (e.g., painting and sculpture) are rare, and eminent creativity in
more than one domain (e.g., visual art, literary work) is extremely rare (Gray, 1966).
Creative potential for a task is envisioned, according to the multivariate approach as the
confluence of several distinct, but interrelated resources (Lubart, 1999; Sternberg & Lubart, 1995;
Lubart, Mouchiroud, Tordjman & Zenasni, 2003). These resources for creativity are specific aspects
of intelligence, knowledge, cognitive styles, personality, motivation, affect, and physical and sociocultural
environmental contexts. Examples of each are: metaphorical thinking ability (intelligence); a
rich, diversified associative network (knowledge); preference for intuitive thinking (cognitive style);
risk taking trait (personality); intrinsic task-focused interest (motivation ); the presence of rich,
idiosyncratic emotional experiences (affect); and a context with diverse stimuli or a rich setting
(physical and/or social environment). These resources can be classified broadly into cognitive factors,
conative factors, and environmental factors. Cognitive and conative resources are person-centred
factors for creativity whereas environmental resources are context-centred factors.
With regard to the confluence of resources, Sternberg and Lubart (1995) propose that creativity
involves more than a simple sum of an individual's level on each of the components for creativity.
First, there may be thresholds for some components (e.g., knowledge) below which creativity is not
possible, regardless of an individual's level on the other components. Second, partial compensation
may occur between the components in which strength on one component (e.g., motivation) may
counteract weakness on another component (e.g., knowledge). Third, although each component
contributes in its own way to creativity, a component is always acting in the presence of other
components and this coaction can lead to interactive effects; for example, high levels on both
intelligence and motivation could multiplicatively enhance creativity. The interactive nature of the
resources, in particular the person-centred and context-centred factors, is also developed in Gagné’s
Developmental Model of Giftedness and Talent, with the environment serving as a catalyst for
person-centred “gifts” to be activated.
Creative potential remains latent until it is called into play in a task. At this point, through the
application of an individual’s resources during the creative process, a production (idea, work) occurs.
Here, the creative process refers to a sequence of thoughts and actions. Based on more than a century
of work, the process can be conceived in terms of divergent-exploratory actions, which are extensive
or expansive, and convergent-integrative actions, which are intensive and bring focus (Lubart, 2000).
These two “modes” occur in cycles, and various facets of the cognitive, conative, and environmental
factors come together in these processes. Over time, the creative process leads to a production, which
can be evaluated (by the creator, [him or herself], and by the creator’s “social group”, and appreciated
as a more or less creative output. This output can be called a creative accomplishment, if it is deemed
sufficiently original and context appropriate. By inference, the creative potential of the production’s
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author can be inferred. To the extent to which an individual produces consistent work that is evaluated
as creative, it is useful to use the term “creative talent”. Thus, a series of creative works or
accomplishments is the hallmark of creative talent; however, the exact criterion for talent varies, in
practice, from one domain to another.
The measurement of creative potential
There are two main paths to the measurement of creative potential. The first is more holistic,
whereas the second is more analytic. The first is more process-based, whereas the second is more
resource-based.
1. The production-based (process-based) approach
In the first approach, an individual is presented with a task and asked to produce creative work.
This assessment situation solicits the creative act in a specific task context. It allows the process to be
engaged during a limited, standardized time. The latent cognitive and conative resources can be
activated and they enter the productive process as the individual judges fit. The extent to which a
person produces work evaluated as creative in this context, compared to other individuals who have
completed the same task is a measure of the person’s creative potential. It is relevant to speak of
creative potential rather than creative accomplishment because the work produced is the reaction to an
elicit request to see what a person can do. In this logic, it is best to inform the individual that the goal
is to be as creative as possible. In this way, the maximum potential can be observed.
In this tradition, Lubart, Besançon, and Barbot (2011) proposed a new tool, EPoC (Evaluation
of Potential Creativity) to assess creative potential in children and adolescents. EPoC consists of four
tasks in each domain of creative work. Two tasks engage divergent-exploratory thinking and two
tasks involve convergent-integrative thinking. Thus the two modes of creative work are assessed per
domain