For a long time, creativity has occupied an ambiguous place in educational discourse: while it was celebrated as a symbolic value, it was rarely treated as a core capability. Today, in a context marked by automation and the expansion of artificial intelligence, that status has changed. Companies, international organisations and experts agree in pointing to creative thinking as one of the most relevant competences for navigating a transforming labour market.
Yet this recognition clashes with a paradoxical reality: as children and young people progress through their schooling, many of them lose the ability to generate original ideas, explore alternatives or think without fear of making mistakes. In other words, just as creativity begins to appear as a strategic competence, it seems to become more fragile. Understanding why this happens, and what we really mean by creativity, is the first step in addressing a question that cuts across education, work and the way we learn to think.
In this article, we do so with the help of Lula Vázquez, a teacher, computer systems engineer and expert in educational technology and creativity.
What we mean when we talk about creativity
Talking about creativity often triggers a mix of diffuse images: sudden inspiration, artistic talent, the figure of the individual genius who creates outside the rules. However, seen from scientific research, creativity turns out to be something quite different. It is not a mysterious attribute reserved for a select few, but a cognitive capacity that can be described, measured and, above all, trained.
One of the most frequently cited works for understanding this idea is the longitudinal study led in the late 1960s by the American researcher George Land. Initially commissioned by NASA to identify the innovative potential of engineers and scientists, this test sought to measure divergent thinking: the ability to generate multiple solutions to the same problem. After confirming its effectiveness with adults, Land decided to apply the same test to a group of children and follow them over time. The results were striking. At the age of five, the vast majority passed the test with ease. At ten, the percentage dropped significantly. In adolescence, it fell again. In adulthood, only a small minority retained that level of creative thinking.
Land’s conclusion was not that children are naturally more brilliant. It was something far more troubling: creativity does not disappear through wear and tear, but is gradually inhibited. It is not lost; it is unlearned. Throughout the educational and social process, learning to give the “correct answer”, to avoid mistakes or to adjust to external expectations ends up reducing the space for exploring alternatives, formulating new questions or tolerating uncertainty.
This interpretation aligns with decades of research in cognitive psychology. From J. P. Guilford’s work in the 1950s to later studies by E. Paul Torrance, creativity has been defined as a skill distinct from intelligence as measured by IQ. It does not depend exclusively on prior knowledge or technical skills, but on the ability to combine ideas, establish unexpected connections and produce original responses that are useful or valuable in a given context.
Debunking myths is essential to understanding what we are talking about. Creativity is not equivalent to sudden inspiration, although it may sometimes manifest that way. It is not synonymous with artistic talent, even though the arts are one of its most visible domains. Nor is it a form of individual genius detached from its environment. In operational terms, creativity can be defined as the ability to generate original ideas that have value. Originality without usefulness is mere occurrence; usefulness without originality is repetition.
Understood in this way, creativity ceases to be an ethereal concept and becomes an observable phenomenon. And therefore something it is reasonable to discuss using data, to analyse how it develops and to ask why, in many cases, it fades over time.
How and why we lose it
If creativity can be understood as a trainable cognitive capacity, what happens along the way for that capacity to weaken? The answer points to a set of mechanisms that reinforce one another, particularly within the school environment.
One of the most evident is the weight of constant evaluation. From an early age, learning becomes associated with getting things right, responding correctly and doing so within a set time. Mistakes, rather than being part of the process, become a signal of failure. In this framework, exploring alternatives, testing partial solutions or asking questions that do not have a clear answer becomes a risk. Gradually, thinking turns into a defensive activity. It no longer serves to explore possibilities, but to avoid making mistakes.
This process favours the dominance of so-called convergent thinking: thinking aimed at finding the best possible answer from a limited set of options. It is a necessary form of thinking (without it there would be no rigour or judgement), but insufficient when it becomes the only one. Divergent thinking, which allows for generating multiple ideas, connecting distant concepts or imagining non-obvious solutions, is pushed into the background. Not because it lacks value, but because it is harder to measure, grade and manage within systems designed for standardisation.
The British educator Ken Robinson popularised this tension by pointing out that modern education systems were designed in the context of industrialisation, with the aim of producing efficient, predictable workers suited to repetitive tasks. His argument was not that schools deliberately “kill” creativity, but something more structural: they were never designed to protect it. When homogeneity is the priority, creativity is excluded by definition, as it introduces variability, uncertainty and uneven rhythms.
These same mechanisms later reappear in other settings. In many organisations, a culture of immediate results and an obsession with quantifiable indicators reinforce risk aversion. Trying something new implies the possibility of failure, and failure often carries visible costs. In that context, innovation is celebrated in discourse but penalised in practice. Ideas that do not fit existing frameworks tend to be discarded before they are explored.
From this perspective, the progressive loss of creativity does not stem from an individual deficit, but from a cumulative logic. By consistently prioritising correctness over exploration, security over curiosity and answers over questions, the space for thinking differently shrinks. Not because creativity ceases to exist, but because the environments in which we learn and work are rarely designed to sustain it.
La conclusión de Land no era que los niños fueran naturalmente más brillantes. Era algo mucho peor: la creatividad no desaparece por desgaste, sino que se va inhibiendo. No se pierde, se desaprende. A lo largo del proceso educativo y social, aprender a dar la “respuesta correcta”, evitar el error o ajustarse a expectativas externas acaba reduciendo el espacio para explorar alternativas, formular preguntas nuevas o tolerar la incertidumbre.
By consistently prioritising correctness over exploration, security over curiosity and answers over questions, the space for thinking differently shrinks.
Why creativity has returned to the centre of the debate
Given all this, where does this renewed interest in creativity come from? It is driven by broader transformations in the world of work. Recent reports on the future of employment converge on one idea: in an increasingly automated market, creative thinking ranks among the most sought-after competences by employers. What was considered secondary for decades now appears as a differentiating factor.
The expansion of artificial intelligence helps explain this shift. Current systems excel precisely in tasks associated with convergent thinking: processing large volumes of information, recognising patterns, optimising known responses or executing repetitive procedures efficiently. In this domain, machines already outperform humans in speed and precision. What they do not do (at least for now) is formulate new problems, imagine unforeseen uses or combine ideas in a situated and contextually meaningful way.
This is where creativity acquires strategic value. Framing good questions, exploring alternatives, connecting knowledge from different fields or redefining a problem before solving it are skills that are not easily automated. That is why they are resurfacing in business discourse and educational agendas.
This shift also explains a certain tension in the current debate. Creativity is demanded, yet the training model that sidelines it remains intact. Innovation is called for, yet predictability and strict compliance with short-term objectives continue to be rewarded. Artificial intelligence did not create this contradiction, but it has made it more visible. By automating what previously occupied a large part of human work, it exposes what we have not sufficiently prepared people for: thinking beyond known procedures, exploring alternatives and redefining problems before solving them.
How do we activate creativity? What science says
If creativity is not an innate trait or a spontaneous act, but a capacity that can be developed or inhibited, accumulated research allows us to identify certain conditions that favour its emergence. Patterns that recur with remarkable consistency across educational, professional and training contexts.
One of the most relevant is the separation between moments of creation and moments of evaluation. Generating ideas requires a space in which judgement is suspended. When criticism appears too early, possibilities narrow. By contrast, when exploration is allowed first and analysis comes later, the range of options expands. This sequence, well documented in studies on creative thinking, is difficult to sustain in environments where everything must be validated immediately.
Another key condition is time. Creativity rarely thrives under constant pressure. Not because it requires slowness, but because it needs room to try, discard and recombine. In education, this translates into methodologies that prioritise project-based learning, where students work on real, complex problems over extended periods. In the workplace, it implies accepting that not all exploration produces visible short-term results.
Play appears repeatedly as a cognitive activator. Researchers such as Mitchel Resnick, from the MIT Media Lab, have highlighted its role in creative learning: experimenting without a fixed goal, manipulating ideas as if they were movable pieces, learning by doing. Play introduces a trial-and-error logic that reduces fear of failure and fosters curiosity.
Collaboration also plays a central role, especially when it occurs among people with different perspectives. Confronting ideas forces them to be explained, revised and transformed. Creativity, in this sense, is not a solitary process, but a relational one. Many of the most fertile ideas emerge from the intersection of disciplines, experiences and languages that initially did not seem connected.
Finally, the use of metaphors, analogies and narratives helps transfer creative thinking to new domains. Comparing the unfamiliar with the familiar makes it possible to understand complex problems and open up solution pathways. It is no coincidence that these resources appear both in teaching and in scientific and business innovation.
Taken together, the evidence points in one direction: creativity is neither innate nor activated by magic, but by creating environments that make it possible. It depends less on individual talent than on rules of the game that allow exploration without immediate penalty.
Making space for creativity
The paradox with which we opened this article remains. Creativity is more necessary today than ever, but also more vulnerable. We know quite well which practices weaken it and which conditions foster it. There is no shortage of data, research or proven experiences. What is lacking is the willingness to reorganise learning and working environments so that this capacity has real space.
Educating without killing creativity does not require adding new subjects. It requires accepting that thinking differently introduces uncertainty, less predictable timelines and results that do not always fit simple metrics. The underlying question is to what extent we are willing to assume that cost in order to preserve a capacity we claim to need.
