From the perspective of associationism, creative thinking results from a mental process in which disparate elements come together in a novel way, resulting in a useful proposal for the individual or the environment or solving a problem.
According to associationists, ideas successively lead to other ideas, and this continuum of connections would constitute the general functioning of the mind.
From this perspective, any associative theory of creativity will focus on analyzing how such ideas can be generated and how these ideas are linked to each other in our minds.
Currently, there is consensus that expanding the number of options or elements so that a wide variety of associations can be generated facilitates creativity. In fact, many of the current theories of creativity precisely place the key to the creative process in the association of ideas proposed by Mednick.