The representations on this site were derived from data reported in two publications:

1. Nathan Crilly (2024). Design thinking and other approaches: How different disciplines see, think and act. Cambridge University Press. https://dx.doi.org/10.1017/9781009498685 and its appendices.

2. Nathan Crilly (2026). Critical thinking, creative thinking, systems thinking and many more: A comparative bibliometric analysis of prevalence and distribution. Thinking Skills and Creativity, 59, 102014. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tsc.2025.102014 and its dataset.

The first of these is a short book exploring the conceptual relationships between different thinking skills, especially design thinking, systems thinking, entrepreneurial thinking and computational thinking (but also many more). The second is a journal paper analysing the relative prevalence and distribution of twenty thinking skills in the research literature (selected from an initial sample of 78). These publications describe the underlying data sources along with the associated methods of extraction, processing and representation. They also refer to many other valuable publications in this area, especially those that consider multiple thinking skills.

This site was developed by Nathan Crilly, Professor of Design at the University of Cambridge.

Nathan specialises in understanding human behaviour in the context of innovation. His research examines how two groups of people think and act: those who engage in design activities (e.g., the creativity of designers, inventors and entrepreneurs) and those who interact with designed artefacts (e.g., the experiences of users, customers and other stakeholders). Drawing on this work, Nathan advises companies ranging from global brands to start-ups on how to implement and apply creativity and design thinking. Nathan is the academic lead for the internationally award-winning course 'Creativity problem solving and design thinking' offered by Cambridge Advance Online. Through this course, Nathan has trained hundreds of professionals from sectors including management consultancy, healthcare, legal services, education, and innovation. You can read more about his work and other publications on his University of Cambridge web page.