^ You make a great point. The idea of how scientists work in general society couldn't be further from teh truth. A lot of it is inspiration (as well as hard work and just repititious experimentation). Intuition keys in. Few people solve problems by going "If x to the power of d, I need milk!"
The OP also makes a great point, which is essentially that genius is not innate or "natural" but can be greatly influenced by practice and hard work. The results are similar to a Harvard study that was released a while ago, which concluded that there was little in terms of "innate talent" and that the music geniuses and so forth of today just worked really, really hard.
Creativity is a skill. That is to say, you can believe it is a skill and it will become so. You can believe you have a set amount and that will also be true, so I think the most effective belief is that creativity is a skill. Work on it, you'll achieve some surprising results.
