From the perspective of mechanical design (but definitely extends to things like art and I would assume coding), I don't really agree, but it is a learned skill

From the perspective of mechanical design (but definitely extends to things like art and I would assume coding), I don't really agree, but it is a learned skill. In essence, being creative is a loop between coming up with ideas, and then looking at them through a practical lens. Being practical comes easy to most technical people, so they need to deliberately let that go to properly iterate through the cycle. Truly innovative solutions to problems are few and far between. Nearly everything is a combination or extension of solutions that have come before. Being good at coming up with ideas is mostly having a good database of knowledge to draw from, and taking the extension or combination process a couple steps too far before tossing out impractical ideas. This is why brainstorming can be effective, if you are working with someone where you feed off each other's ideas, the process can be a lot more natural rather than deliberate.