There is a great framework for understanding this process in "The Act of Creation" by Arthur Koestler. His thesis is that creativity is essentially about findi

There is a great framework for understanding this process in "The Act of Creation" by Arthur Koestler. His thesis is that creativity is essentially about finding previously undiscovered/underappreciated connections between "diassociative matrices" (which is his terminology for frames of reference or contexts essentially if I remember correctly). If that is true then it sort of stands to reason that people who have many and broad frames of reference because they have a diverse or unusual set of things in their background stand to have more of the raw material for creativity. Or to put it another way, foxes are more creative than hedgehogs.