The Basadur Creative Problem Solving Profile is a tool designed to help an individual, team or organization understand how to increase creativity and innovation in a supportive environment.

We often use the terms "creative" or "innovative" to describe people who seem full of ideas, adventurous. But how often do we say the same thing of ourselves? How often do we acknowledge that we are as creative and original as our colleagues?

Applied creativity is the key to innovation. We can't be innovative - as individuals or as organizations - if we don't allow ourselves to think differently, question our assumptions or take calculated risks. Creativity and innovation allow us to anticipate what our customers want, to develop and market new products and services ahead of our competitors, to create and maintain competitive advantage. They are essential ingredients for any organization's continued success in the marketplace.

Everyone one of us is creative, no matter what job we are doing. We simply demonstrate our creativity in different ways. The challenge is making sure that we can express our creativity by fostering a work environment where new ideas are welcomed, where trying something different is encouraged, and where making mistakes is recognized as an important part of learning.

The creative process can be characterized as a continuous, circular, four stage creative problem solving process (Figure 2) involving two opposite ways of apprehending knowledge and two opposite ways of utilizing knowledge. These two dimensions may be portrayed as two perpendicular axes defining four quadrants or stages of the creative process as shown in Figures 1 and 2. Furthermore, an individual's preferences for either mode of Apprehension, and either mode of Utilization, define their 'creative problem-solving style' or preferred stage of the creative process. An individual's 'creative problem-solving profile' is one's blend of relative preferences for each of these four quadrants or stages. The CPSP inventory measures an individual's style and profile.

The CPSP consists of two lists of 12 word pairs. In one list, the 12 pairs of words are descriptive of Apprehension, one member of each pair representing Apprehension by Experiencing (denoted X), and the other representing Apprehension by Thinking (T). In the second list of word pairs, the 12 word pairs are descriptive of Utilization, one word in each pair representing Utilization for Ideation (I) (creating options), and the other representing Utilization for Evaluation (E). Each word pair from the Apprehension list is combined with a word pair from the Utilization list. This produces 12 four-item sets of words, each set containing one word representing X, I, T and E. In addition, six four-word distractor sets are embedded within the 12 four-item sets of words. These distractors contain unrelated words and are intended to prevent respondents from identifying patterns and responding stereotypically.

Respondents are instructed to rank the words within each four-item set from 1 to 4, where 1 represents the word "least characteristic of me as a problem?solver" and 4 represents the word "most characteristic of me as a problem-solver".