It’s just as accurate as more time-consuming assessments but way more fun. Try it yourself.

BY JESSICA STILLMAN, CONTRIBUTOR, INC.COM@ENTRYLEVELREBEL

For Inc.

Illustration: Inc.

A good idea can mean the difference between an effective marketing campaign or a dull one, a money-making product launch or a dud, a business success or a business failure. And it’s certainly true that some of us just seem to naturally have more good ideas than others.

Are you one of these lucky creative people?

To find out, you could look at past performance and take a guess. Or you could go to a psychologist and have them administer one of several lengthy, research-validated assessments to get a definitive answer. Or you could just click on this link and take a fun and ultra simple four-minute quiz.

The world’s simplest way to measure creativity

This quick test of creativity is called the Divergent Association Task (DAT), and it was developed by psychologist Jay Olson, now at Harvard. Recently published research shows that, despite its simplicity, the test is as effective at measuring creativity as much more involved and time-consuming tests.

But before I explain how it works, give it a test run if you’re curious as discussing the inner workings of the assessment may throw off the results. OK, finished? Then let’s dive into the thinking behind this new, ultra-easy way to test creativity.

The DAT task, as you saw if you tried it, simply asks people to come up with 10 nouns that are as far apart in meaning as possible. Then, an algorithm developed by the researchers measures how far apart the words really are. “Cat” and “dog” would be close. “Hot dog” and “thermonuclear winter” would, presumably, be more distant. The more so-called “semantic distance” between the words you dreamed up, the greater your creativity.

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