There is an infinity of realized and potential creative things, creative ideas, and creative performances, and yet there is no such thing as creativity, at least not in the two ways most of us think about creativity. (1) There is no general essence of creativity, no indispensable factor or shared quality that is an intrinsic part of all creative…

How does creativity develop from a nearly ubiquitous and domain-general capacity associated with playfulness and openness to experience to a highly rarified and domain-specific ability associated with invention and innovation? In this short report, I describe creativity along two dimensions: self- and socially referenced creativity. In…