"The Act Of Creation is absolutely fantastic — necessary, even — in its entirety. It will change the way you think about everything, including thinking itself." Big Think
I have been studying creativity for about three years. This quest began after the simple realization that a process or heuristic is only as good as the thinker. So how does one think better, which really means more creatively. Early on I realized that Einstein explained creativity correctly as a combinatorial process. Effectively all new ideas are just combinations of old ideas rearranged. It has to be that way. It's obvious if you "think" about it.
I took to explaining creativity as a slot machine where when the three apples line up, out pops the creative idea. Metaphor is not my strong suit so I was very pleased that I had a metaphor to explain a complex subject--creativity. Today I found out that Arthur Koestler used the same metaphor in 1964 to explain creativity in The Act of Creation. Big Think calls the book the seminal work on the "anatomy of creativity". More on Koestler, creativity and thinking is in this Big Think story, "How Creativity in Humor, Art, and Science Works: Arthur Koestler’s Theory of Bisociation". Well worth reading in its entirety.
Studying creativity changes the way you understand thinking and the way you think. Readings on creativity, like philosophy, should be a required subject for college students.