The Architecture-Engineering-Construction (AEC) sector is one of the largest industrial employers in many countries. In the European Union (EU) for example, it encompasses more than 2 million enterprises and approximately 12 million employees, representing 9.8% of the EU’sGross Domestic Product and employing over 7.1% of the workforce (NGRF 2010). This contribution and global competition makes the novelty of the AEC projects increasingly important. Therefore, AEC professionals need to be educated how to develop not only traditional, or routine projects, but also projects incorporating novel designs and construction processes. They need to be creative, and be able to develop unknown (or unproven) solutions which are feasible, surprising, and potentially patentable. Currently, AEC professionals are no longer being seen as leaders or innovators, more followers – using deductive problem solving rather than seeking opportunities, using their creativity and developing inventions. This resonates with thinking derived from innovation literature (Akintoye et al. 2012). As a result, designers and engineers in particular have seemingly lost their ability to innovate. This is partly attributable to ‘inappropriate’ education that has historically focused on production, rather than creativity. This is just the opposite of what happened in the 19 and early 20 th Centuries, when designers and engineers were seen as the true ‘drivers’ of change. During this time, highlevel education was aligned to incentives (e.g. the highest salary rates) which helped design and engineering schools attract the most talented students; and these graduates were capable of meeting all technological and sociocultural challenges of the quickly expanding societies (Arciszewski 2006; Arciszewski and Harrison 2010a, 2010b; Arciszewski and Rebolj 2008). For instance, the construction of some monumental buildings during this period in history (e.g. Eiffel Tower, Villa Savoye, and The Bauhaus Building) created not only technological solutions, but also cultural revolutions- leading to a fundamental change in the way design and engineering was perceived. This research posits that creativity has increasingly been underrepresented; and as such, needs to be revisited, especially in a rapidly evolving technological-driven world. For example, such challenges now include environmental and sustainability demands, increased levels of safety compliance, enhanced security issues, and whole life demands (energy, maintenance etc.). Whilst it could be argued that some of these challenges extend beyond the AEC domain per se, it is important to identify the key promoters and inhibitors of engineering creativity. In doing so, the profession as a whole will benefit from a new cogent way of embedding creativity into solutions; the result of which will not only benefit society, but also help inspire future AEC successors to follow this approach. Any changes, particularly those related to the ways that AEC students are educated, are extremely difficult, mostly because of the Vector of Psychological Inertia (G. Altshuller 1984) in action. This phenomenon refers to a natural tendency of individuals and communities to resist any changes, thereby delaying progress as much as possible. This is also influenced by the way in which the instructors were originally educated (mostly as highly sophisticated analysts) as this has a significant impact on the way they want to teach students. Cognisant of this, it is important to recognise the need to apply a complex systems approach to analyse the impact of this in order address the current situation. This paper presents design and engineering leadership as three interrelated abilities: 1) to develop a vision, 2) to transform it into a strategy, and 3) to implement it. The key to leadership is the ability to develop feasible ideas or concepts (e.g., a new type of engineering system or thconstruction process) using a set of abilities (traits) required to implement them [as opposed to using existing concepts to perform typical/routine work]. In particular, the development of a vision similar to conceptual design, to inventive design. In both cases a new idea, or a concept of an engineering system, needs to be developed. This is the area of activities in which creativity, or abductive generation of new ideas, takes place. This position is proffered, as historically, ‘followers’ have been seen to create stagnation, producing what has been called “Vector of Psychological Inertia” (H. Altshuller 1984), or fixation (Youmans and Arciszewski 2014). This psychological phenomenon therefore tends to makes change and progress more difficult, and in some cases often even prevents it. The emphasis therefore is to consider the development of leaders (not followers), in order to minimise the negative impact of the Vector of Psychological Inertia. Building upon the principles of the Theory of Successful Intelligence (Sternberg 1985, 1996, 1997), this paper describes “Success” as a relative concept, which is defined by a given person in relation to the socio-cultural context and personal desires. This study therefore posits that there is a need to develop a new paradigm that recognises the importance of both analytical and creative works. Given this, this research defines analyst learners as the people who use rote learning and deduction, eventually induction, as opposed to creative people who use also abduction for reasoning. This approach extends learning capability beyond the learners’ cognitive capability. Relying on the principles of Theory of Successful Intelligence (Sternberg 1985, 1996, 1997), Positive Psychology (Schueller 2012), and Appreciative Intelligence (Barrett and Fry 2008), this paper asserts that by using the ‘right’ methodologies and media, general principles of creative work could be translated into an explicit knowledge form and become part of a body of knowledge; hence, enabling the “Successful Departments” (Arciszewski 2009) to teach learners the “Creative Intelligence” and “Appreciative Intelligence”. In this context, the potential of utilising advanced visualisation tools such as immersive game-like virtual reality interfaces is deemed vital – especially for augmenting analytical and parametric thinking capacity to intuitive idea generation (which could both be supported by these interfaces).