Does Intelligence Play a Role In Creativity?

Creativity is the ability to come up with new ideas through a mental process of connecting existing concepts. The ideas don't have to be revolutionary (which is a common misconception many people have about creative thinking), they just have to be new for the thinker.

Intelligence certainly plays a part in creative thinking, but not how you might expect. ... Intelligence only gets you so far when it comes to creativity. To be creative is to pull existing knowledge into a new situation and quickly sort through potential outcomes. 

Being able to come up with creative ideas isn't something you need an overly-high IQ to accomplish. Once you've got a level of knowledge gathering and utilization that's about average, you're well on your way to having the creative potential of Albert Einstein, Bill Gates, or Steve Jobs. Mr. Jobs even stated this himself while he was alive by saying:

"Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn't really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That's because they were able to connect experiences they've had and synthesize new things. And the reason they were able to do that was that they've had more experiences or they have thought more about their experiences than other people."

So intelligence matters, it demonstrates your ability to gather knowledge and effectively use it. Creativity is the ability to go beyond the intelligence frame and capitalize on seemingly random connections of concepts.

In conclusion: expert creatives don't need to be more intelligent than the average person. They simple do three things more diligently than anyone else: they have more experiences, they think on their experiences more often, and when they start pursuing potential outcomes to problems or projects they simply work more with the ideas they come up with.

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