5.3.3 Creative Products

Reflecting psychology's emphasis on laboratory studies, the most frequently discussed products of creative thought are solutions to problems, responses on creativity tests, and explanations for phenomena. Close behind come technological inventions and artefacts, novel ideas, and new styles, designs, or paradigms. Although of more interest to the layperson when thinking about creativity, the fine arts (painting, sculpture, and music) received only half as much attention from the authors as scientific and laboratory problem solving. There are the expressions of emotions and abstract ideas, the performing arts of dance and drama, occupations such as advertising and marketing, and other media such as photography and film.

An important question concerning products, as it is for processes, is whether or not any generalizations can be made about products that are judged to be creative across different domains. The most obvious statement is that creative products are novel ‑ they are not imitations, nor are they mass‑produced. Other requirements of such products are that they are powerful and generalizable, exhibit parsimony, cause irreversible changes in the human environment, may involve unusual sensory images or transformations, and are valuable or useful to the society, or at least the restricted domain, in which they were formed.

Some features that may be more relevant to scientific creativity and creative problem solving are that the products should show sensitivity to gaps in existing knowledge, cross disciplinary and within‑discipline boundaries so that they are difficult to categorize, be surprising, and be correct, in that experts agree on the produced solution. In addition, they may be difficult, initially vague, or ill‑defined and involve coherent syntheses of broad areas. Torrance's criteria, which include showing humour, fantasy, colour, and movement, in both literal and metaphoric senses, probably are more relevant to the arts and specific tests of creativity than they are to science.