The designation of the 4 Ps was originally done by Mel Rhodes in a 1961 Phi Delta Kappan article entitled, An Analysis of Creativity. He wrote, "The Word creativity is a noun naming the phenomenon in which a person communicates a new concept (which is the product). Mental activity (or mental process) is implicit in the definition, and of course, no one could conceive of someone living and working in a vacuum, so the Word press is also implicit" (p. 305).
See the book by Tudor Rickards, called "Creativity and the management of Change" (1999). He describes how, in the 1950, a young educational researcher called Mel Rhodes set out to find a definition of creativity. He found lots of them, often focusing on different aspects of creativity. The 4-P model was his was of bringing some conceptual clarity to the messy subject of creativity.
The Ps:
Person: what attributes of your people may help or hinder idea generatoin and/or implementation.
Process: what tools, techniques and/or methods do you use for working together to optimise your creative and critical thinking?
Product: what do you want to do better? Be creative around product, service, processes, other? The clearer the need the better the focus.
Press: what is the team, departmental, divisional, organisational climate that 'presses' upon people and their work, helping and hindering idea flow?
On this last point, see work by Goran Ekvall for pioneering research into the dimensions of Press or Climate: googleScholar.qst?docId=90770350">http://www.questia.com/googleScholar.qst?docId=90770350
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