Generative AI is now embedded in daily work. Yet the creative payoff has been uneven.
Recent research highlighted by Harvard Business Review points to a key reason: AI supports creativity only when people know how to think with it.
The differentiator is metacognition—the ability to plan, monitor and adjust one’s own thinking.
Employees with strong metacognitive skills treat AI as a thinking partner. They question outputs, explore alternatives and refine ideas. Others tend to accept the first answer and move on.
The implication for leaders is clear. Creativity does not come from AI tools alone. It comes from how people engage with them.
A few signals to pay attention to:
– AI expands creativity when employees actively evaluate and iterate on outputs
– Simply rolling out tools does not change creative performance
– Training attention should shift from “how to use AI” to “how to think with AI”
– Workflows matter. Processes that encourage comparison, reflection and revision make the difference.
AI can amplify thinking, but it cannot replace it. Organizations that invest in metacognitive capability will see far greater creative returns from the same technology.