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A Curious Human Instinct Lives Deep, a Reflex in all of Us.

The world needs creative thinkers. You were born one.

The CHILD Creative Thinking Framework

Creative thinking can be measured.

Not whether you're creative — that question is useless. Which of the five you run on, and which one is quietly holding the rest back.

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The Creative Thinking Handbook

And measured skills can be trained.

Nothing was lost. It just stopped being called thinking.

A CHILD in Us is the handbook for all five traits — one chapter each, real exercises, and a loop you can run on Monday's actual problem.

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Amazon Top 100 in three categories · Paperback in 14 countries, eBook everywhere

The five traits: Curiosity, Heuristics, Imagination, Laconic, Deductive.

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A CHILD in Us: The Creative Thinking Handbook by Gaurav Yadav.

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A CHILD in Us: The Creative Thinking Handbook — paperback and eBook editions

A CHILD in Us — The Creative Thinking Handbook. Paperback and eBook, wherever you read.

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I am the world’s fastest reader, and just finished reading A CHILD in Us. As an expert on accelerated learning I highly recommend this book as an excellent source for unleashing your Creativity and Imagination.

Howard Stephen BergThe World’s Fastest Reader

Stay ahead of AI, and everyone else, in your career. Read this book. This is a practical, current guide to the challenges we face today. Plus it’s downright fun and enjoyable to read.

William A. Draves, CPPPresident, Learning Resources Network (LERN)

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Ranked

AmazonBest Sellers — Top 100 Paid, three categories at once.

  1. #45Creativity Self-Help
  2. #61Business Decision-Making
  3. #83Motivational Business Management

Shelved beside Twyla Tharp, The Creative Habit, Gary Keller, The One Thing, John Lewis Gaddis, On Grand Strategy.Amazon.com Kindle Store, Top 100 Paid — December 2025

Analytical thinking has been taught for a hundred years.Creative thinking has never been taught at all.

The World Economic Forum's Future of Jobs Report 2025 ranks creative thinking among the top five core skills employers need — and among the fastest-rising skills through 2030.

Now name the class where you learned it.

Every one of us was handed a method for analysis: outline it, break it down, show your work. Nobody was handed a method for the other thing. So creativity got filed under talent — something you either have or you envy.

That filing error is the most expensive mistake in modern professional development. Creative thinking has a structure. It's observable. It's repeatable. And it's already running inside you.

WEF Future of Jobs Report 2025 — core skills ranked by share of employers identifying them as essential.

The Framework

Five traits. One loop. Infinite problems.

  1. CuriosityThe seed of creative thinking.Every idea starts as a question someone was willing to ask out loud. Curiosity is the habit of asking one more.The seed
  2. HeuristicsThe art of simplifying complexity.You have solved something like this before, or someone has. Heuristics is knowing which pattern to reach for.The shortcut
  3. ImaginationThe fuel for creativity and innovation.The ability to hold a version of the world that does not exist yet, and describe it clearly enough to build.The fuel
  4. LaconicThe power of precision.Most ideas fail because they are too big to explain. Laconic is the discipline of removing until it lands.The edge
  5. DeductiveThe logic others can follow.An idea only travels if the reasoning is visible. Deductive is the work of making the path checkable.The anchor
CREATIVE THINKINGPROBLEMCCuriosityThe seed ofCreative ThinkingHHeuristics(Smart Shortcuts)The art ofsimplifyingcomplexityIImaginationThe Fuel forcreativity andinnovationLLaconic(Power of Precision)The art ofeloquence andpersuasionDDeductive(Logical Flow)An anchor thatgrounds yourdecisions in logic andcritical thinkingA CHILD in US: The Creative Thinking HandBook

The CHILD Framework is a five-trait model of creative thinking developed by design anthropologist Gaurav Yadav. CHILD is an acronym for Curiosity, Heuristics, Imagination, Laconic, and Deductive — five cognitive traits that operate as a repeating loop rather than a linear process. The framework was introduced in A CHILD in Us: The Creative Thinking Handbook (2025).

Watch a four-year-old meet a locked box. Why is it locked? (Curiosity)The other one opened with a twist. (Heuristics) Maybe there's treasure.(Imagination) It's stuck. (Laconic) So I need something thin. (Deductive) That's not cute. That's a complete problem-solving architecture, running before the child can read.

Explore the CHILD Framework

The Book

Born from years of observation. Built for a lifetime of use.

A CHILD in Us: The Creative Thinking Handbook is a systematic deconstruction of how innovation actually happens — built through design anthropology rather than motivational theory.

What's inside

  • 19 chapters across 5 sections — one section per trait — plus an introduction and epilogue
  • Real cases: Dyson’s 5,126 prototypes, Netflix’s pivot, Disney’s imagineering, Toyota’s lean system
  • The CHILD Loop — how the traits chain into a repeatable method
  • Prompts designed to make you think, not nod

What it isn't: a personality test, a motivational read, or 300 pages of research summary.

Read more about the bookGet your copy

Which of the five is your strongest?

And which one is quietly costing you?

CHILDex measures all five traits and returns your Child Index — a profile, not a score out of ten. It takes about six minutes, costs nothing, and needs no signup to see your result.

Most people find their weakest trait is the one they never suspected.

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Built for people who get paid to solve things nobody has solved yet

You lead innovation

— and ‘let’s brainstorm’ keeps producing the same three ideas.

You lead people

— and you can’t coach a skill you were never taught yourself.

You’re building what’s next

— a company, a career, a curriculum, in a decade that keeps changing the brief.

You solve the hard ones

— the problems that arrive without precedent, where analysis runs out.

Written for

  • Innovators
  • Creative professionals
  • Designers
  • Managers & team leaders
  • C-suite & senior executives
  • Educators
  • Entrepreneurs
  • Students
  • Young adults
  • Engineers & IT professionals
  • Analysts
  • Policy makers
  • Lifelong learners
Find your book's starting point

The framework, in rooms

Workshops, lecture halls, book fairs — where the CHILD Framework has been taught and talked about.

@gauravauthor

Taught at the Illuminate Workshop — Scale Your Idea into Business within a Day, organised by E-Cell, IIT Bombay, held at NMAMIT, Nitte, Udupi, Karnataka.

Featured in The Indian Express (Delhi edition) and exhibited at the New Delhi World Book Fair 2026, Bharat Mandapam.

You already know how to do this.
You just stopped calling it thinking.

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