Directed creativity is the purposeful production of creative ideas in a topic area, followed up by deliberate effort to implement some of those ideas.
Many people incorrectly assume that creative thinking is a special gift, bestowed on only a few.
The problem is that while we have the ability to think in new patterns, our minds are optimized to think with existing patterns. This flexible, pattern-matching mechanism gives us many human abilities that we take for granted. For example, it enables a good troubleshooter to quickly zero-in on a problem in a piece of equipment based on an initial review of the situation. The troubleshooter has seen the pattern of failure before and, therefore, has a good idea of the underlying breakdown. The mental mechanism is the same whether we are preparing a budget or just trying to get out of bed in the morning.