Studying intuition and creativity: Identifying intuition-rich contexts and candidates for research

This chapter addresses links between creativity and intuition. The useful distinction regarding the conceptualization of intuition is from a theory construct perspective. Albert Einstein believed that intuition lead rational thinking and analysis and not the other way around. Einstein saw all great discovery as resulting from intuition and not through the application of logic or prior knowledge. Howard Gardner defines a creator as someone who creates on a regular basis, fashioning ideas, concepts and objects in a given domain in new and novel ways that are ultimately accepted by the community of which they are a part. Unlike leaders who influence people through the stories they tell, creators lead others indirectly through symbol creation, artifact construction, and experience creation. Creators include artists, designers, and experience architects. While inventors, designers, business leaders, and artists of all types have already been the subject for intuition research, in many cases, researchers work with exemplars in these domains, i.e., experts.