INTRODUCTION

On June 4, 1989, some Chinese students thought they had a creative idea. The idea was of a democratic government in China. The government of the time found their idea to be neither creative nor amusing. Roughly 1,000 students and other protesters were massacred by government forces that day at Tiananmen Square. A government leader who supported the students, Zhao Ziyang, died in January of 2005, shortly before this introduction was written. He had been under house arrest for years, and his death was given short shrift by the Chinese government.

The idea of democracy would be wholly uncreative in the United States, at least as democracy is traditionally thought of. People in the United States would probably say that the idea is lacking in novelty and hence cannot be creative. In some other country, someone having the idea of democracy might be seen as being very creative indeed and at the forefront of new thought about government. Clearly, different countries, or at least their governments, have different ideas about what constitutes creative thought. What does constitute creative thought, and how have people around the world understood and studied creativity?

COMMONALITIES IN CREATIVITY RESEARCH

The goal of this book is to explore theories, research, assessment, and programs for the development of creativity in a wide variety of countries around the world. To this end, we have solicited contributions from authors around the world.