The Creativity Challenge ─ How We Can Recapture American Innovation

American creativity has steadily declined since 1990. That disturbing trend recently came to light through the work of leading educational psychologist KH Kim, a recognized expert in creativity assessment. In this insightful and inspiring book, Kim discovers the causes of the decrease in creativity and proposes methods of recapturing American creativity in education, in industry, and throughout every sector of society.

Through the life stories of innovators, Kim debunks the assumption that creative people must be born with innate talents. She shows how parents, educational methods, and cultures shaped innovators' creative expression. As her research clearly indicates, cultural climates and attitudes (including over-reliance on standardized testing) often work against innovation unless creativity is deliberately grown and developed.

Culminating over twenty years of extensive research, Kim has devised original models to identify creativity in people and organizations and help it to blossom. Gardening metaphors illustrate simple but powerful steps to transform creative potential into innovation. She emphasizes practical steps to cultivate creative climates (environment) in schools, in homes, and at work; nurture creative attitudes (personality) toward learning, work, and life; and apply creative thinking skills. Kim's models for creativity are complemented with evidence-based methods to learn and practice creative skills in everyday life.

KH Kim is an award-winning professor of educational psychology at the College of William & Mary. Her research study titled "The Creativity Crisis" was the subject of a 2010 Newsweek cover story that caused widespread concern. Numerous news outlets have since sought her expertise, including the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, U.S. News & World Report, NPR, and others. Kim is the co-editor of Creatively Gifted Students Are Not Like Other Gifted Students: Research, Theory, and Practice. She is the co-editor of the World Journal of Behavioral Science and the author of numerous articles in professional journals. She serves on the editorial board of the Creativity Research Journal and also the Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts. She is the Creativity Network Chair of the National Association for Gifted Children and advises the Torrance Center for Creativity and Talent Development. She is the CEO of Nebulys Technologies and the co-inventor of high-tech biomedical systems, currently developing creativity assessment technology (patents-pending).