Creativity and creative problem solving have long been topics of significance. Creative problem solving can be approached in a systematic way and one technique that has found widespread application in the USA and Canada is known as the Osborn-Parnes process. This process was first developed by Alex Osborn who coined the phrase 'Brain-Storming' in the 1950's. Later working with Sid Parnes and others associated with CPSI The Creative Problem Solving Institute the process was fully developed (Byron, K. 2006). According to Tony Proctor (1999, pg. 1), "Creativity involves an ability to come up with new and different viewpoints on a subject". Creative problem solving is process anyone can use to deal with many of life's daily difficulties, opportunities, and tasks. CPS is a simple process that involves breaking down a problem to understand it, generating ideas to solve the problem and evaluating those ideas to find the most effective solutions. Highly creative people tend to follow this process in their heads, without thinking about it. Less naturally creative people simply have to learn to use this very simple process (Baumgartner J., 2013). The foundations of creative problem solving are creative and critical thinking, clearing away some myths and misunderstanding about creativity, clarifying the reasons why creativity is important, describing the basic guidelines to keep in mind when applying CPS, and identifying several basic tools that are used frequently in CPS (Treffinger, et al., 2006).
Creative and critical thinking are often seen as opposites, poles apart and incompatible with one another. Creative thinking is often describing as a divergent process in which we begin at a single point with a single question, but extend our search in many directions, generating a wide variety of new possibilities. We prefer to use more familiar word generate when our goal is to seek many, varied, or unusual possibilities, or to add details and expand on existing possibilities.
