But at its core creativity is, at a practical level, just remixing ideas and applying some value metric against them.
Regarding the article, you can apply creative remixing at multiple levels so a creative nonfiction writer may start with fixed facts but can still remix the order, presentation, format, where to begin/end, etc.
Like when I read these comments I'm just left scratching my head and wondering, "what's the point here? Why assert that creativity is something narrow and well defined?" I don't per say think it's mystical, but it seems apparent to me it's quite subjective and broad. So I just don't really understand where you're both coming from. I'm open to hearing more about it.
I think the core of my objection is that I think creativity involves discovery as well as remixing. Often as a software engineer I'm assembling lego bricks other people have developed in order to build a new shape. That's straightforward remixing and I think it is a creative endeavor. But sometimes I come across something more challenging that requires experimentation and stumbling down wrong paths, until I discover an architecture that generalizes wonderfully and which addresses problems I haven't even considered yet. I'm a bit of a mathematical platonist, and I think that structure existed in some nonphysical way and that I uncovered it through empiricism and a pinch of cleverness. But I don't think it's really a product of my genius - I'm not all that smart - as much as that it's an almost inevitable result of how the universe works, a minima in some manifold that I was traveling down. I realize that might sound romantic or mystical, but that isn't how I see it.