ABSTRACT

Since psychologists began to study creativity in the 1950s, they have focused on product creativity-domains of creative activity in which the creative process results in a finished, fixed product (Sawyer, 1995, 1996, 2003b). Creative products include ostensible physical artifacts, like paintings, sculptures, and musical scores, and also less tangible products, like a journal article outlining a new theory in particle physics. What these products share in common is that a creative process of essentially unlimited length generates the product; the creator works on the product in private, in a studio, laboratory, or office; and the creator has unlimited opportunities for revision. The created product does not appear until the creator makes a final decision that the process is complete and that the product is ready to be revealed to others working in the domain.