creativity can happen in three main ways, which correspond to the three sorts of surprise. (…) The first involves making unfamiliar combinations of familiar ideas. Examples include poetic imagery, collage in painting or textile art, and analogies. These new combinations can be generated either deliberately or, often, unconsciously. Think of a physicist comparing an atom to the solar system, for instance, or a journalist comparing a politician with a decidedly non-cuddly animal. Or call to mind some examples of creative association in poetry or visual arts. (…) The other two types of creativity are interestingly different from the first. They involve the exploration, and in the most surprising cases the transformation, of conceptual spaces in people’s minds.
— Boden, Margaret A. The Creative Mind. Myths and Mechanisms. 1990. Second ed. London: Routledge, 2004.
