This is an excellent TED conference talk from Tim Brown, founder of IDEO, on the creative process.
Key point: the creative process (as he describes it) requires 3 main stages:
- Exploration
- Rapid prototyping
- Role Playing (to see the world as another)
As a bonus, I found this comment from marsCubed on the YouTube page for this video very relevant and true:
The creative process is an act of will. It is stepping out of the stuff everyone knows and changing the world with something original or completely new