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in search of a door or window. It's as simple and as enigmatic as that.

There do seem to be four factors: the creative individual, who seems particularly skilled in thinking the un-thought, if not the unthinkable; the creative process, that incomprehensible mental mystery which produces the insight and the blueprint; the creative environment, the physical, social, cultural and intellectual mix the individual inhabits; and the creation, the actual novel idea, concept, invention, solution, or 'story' which emerges.

Let's consider these four factors.

The creative individual? I believe we all have creative skills, but some of us have more of them than others. Human evolution seems to have equipped us with problem solving skills. As our brains developed, we found new ways of doing things, using things, applying our knowledge to ensure our survival.

At some stage in evolution our brains moved beyond simple problem solving - how do you make fire, how do you skin an animal and preserve its hide to make a leather or fur coat, how do you make tools, how do you use tools? Initially pragmatic, our ability to solve problems fed off an innate capacity to ask questions. If you cannot question, you cannot find answers.

But as our brains developed to conceive of the abstract and not just the concrete, that ability to question moved into the realms of exploring ideas. It must, I believe, have accompanied our development of language.

With words you can pose questions, step beyond everyday experience and habitual, learned behaviour; without words you can only experiment to see what happens next, or learn from chance.

We all inherit that problem solving, questioning, creative legacy. Just as some people are better than others at catching, throwing or hitting a ball, so some of us are better at being creative than others.

Which takes us to the second factor in the mix - the creative process. This undoubtedly takes place within the mind. Creativity doesn't magically appear like writing on a wall - although you could imagine a wall with writing on it, and suddenly make sense of the words.

We have a genetic capacity for creativity. We learn how to use it. We learn that we can 'think outside the given' - that we can ask questions, we can have doubts, we can handle uncertainty, we can make mistakes and learn from them. The more practice we get, the better we become at doing it.

Except, of course, we are not alone. We grow up in families and communities, go to school, become absorbed into peer

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