Engineering

Abstract Creativity can be viewed as the outcome of interacting mental and social mechanisms. In individual designers, thinking is multimodal, depending on sensory, motor, and emotional representations in addition to words. Creativity works in minds that are capable of taking previously unconnected representations and combining them into ones that turn out to be new, valuable, and surprising. Well-functioning groups such as design teams, scientific laboratories, and artist colonies can be more creative than individuals on their own, when the groups foster communication of semantic pointers among individuals. Apple’s production of novel and successful products such as the Apple II, Macintosh, iMac, iPod, iPhone, and iPad illustrates the mental and social mechanisms responsible for creative design.