I used to always pick this one too....but I stopped. I haven't noticed any kind of difference except that now I have an extra ability point to spend on something that yields more tangible results.

Spend your points on research and economics; if you can excel in these 2 areas all the other bonuses become rather negligible. You gain techs faster and you increase your income which in turn increases everything from research to production.

Some good combos for me have been:

Federalist for economic bonus, with abilities in research +50, and remaing AP towards economics.

Populist for diplomacy and morale bonus, with research +50, and remaining AP towards economics.

These are of course subjective but they work for me. I never waste AP on things like range, creativity, bravery, espionage, etc.....because all the bonuses I pile on research make up for it rather quickly.

Hope this helps!

We found no obvious benefit when we discussed it here:
Link

It'd be nice to know when such a breakthrough occurred, seeing that I never actually noticed it.

I have seen several examples of special events related to increased research. They indicate that you have experienced something like a 25% increase in the area you are currently researching. They seem to pop up randomly, and I've had about three of them happen in my current game so far. Could this be the result of being creative? Will have to wait for a comment from the game designers.....

nope,. these events are due to anomalies and not creativity. Creativity increase the odd of a major breakthru like the new hyperdrive engine that boost speed by 50% or the think tank that boost research by 100% but those breakthru are galaxy wide and thus, you get the benefit but everybody else too.

I've gotten the "Ultradrive" event without the Creativity ability.