Creative Quotient

Divergent-thinking measures predict adult creative achievement better than IQ does, the finding Torrance's tests are famous for. The Creative Quotient is what happens when a framework finally treats that finding as the load-bearing claim it is, scored with open divergent-thinking constructs rather than any one proprietary test, and how a compensatory model saves the kid who can't afford piano lessons.

E. Paul Torrance's longitudinal data, finalized by Kyung Hee Kim's 2011 analysis, established that divergent-thinking measures predict adult creative achievement better than IQ does. The finding has not made it into mainstream education or hiring practice. Cooper's Creative Quotient volume argues it should be the headline, and shows how to measure it with the open divergent-thinking constructs (Guilford's fluency, flexibility, originality, and elaboration) rather than any one proprietary test.

The book pulls on Anna Abraham's The Neuroscience of Creativity for the network-level neuroscience (default mode, executive control, salience), on Csikszentmihalyi's flow research, on McGilchrist's hemispheric framework, and on the open divergent-thinking tradition (Guilford's four constructs, with originality scored by modern open semantic-distance methods rather than the proprietary Torrance test forms), plus the dual-model performance/portfolio assessment. The dual model is load-bearing: the framework counts both divergent-thinking score AND a performance-or-portfolio assessment (music scored against public-domain urtext), and either side can be dropped at forty percent. This is the compensatory move that saves the kid who could not afford piano lessons but can write a poem.

Short volume. Companion to the main VQ-Trade book.

• The Neuroscience of Creativity, Anna Abraham
• Creativity, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
• Wired to Create, Kaufman and Gregoire
• The Master and His Emissary, Iain McGilchrist

Creativity researchers, educators, arts-education advocates, organizational-innovation readers.