Creativity UnWrappedAn Ontology of Production

An archestra notebook

© 2014 Malcolm Ryder / archestra research

Production

• All kinds of things are produced as opposed to merely found.

• We produce ideas, processes, objects, organisms, systems, events, conditions, solutions... and blends of them.

• The point is not to have an exhaustive inventory. The point is that production is intended to generate a supply of something – a new instance.

• A production may generate a new type or new use of something, but production is simply one way that we get to the new.

• Production occurs in a variety of modes but the most important difference in production mode is between being prescribed or not prescribed.

CONCEIVE

PROVIDE

INTEND

ACCEPT

Creative SpaceCreativity always involves a degree of tension between interest in the proposed “What If”, and interest in the actual “As Is”.

Proposals can be informal and even non-committal; actuals can be ambiguous and ephemeral.

Creativity explores whether some way of being can have some type of importance.

???What If… As Is…

Creative WorkSpaceCreativity explores any of the ways that makingsomething can relate an idea of that thing to the actual presence of that thing. The “workspace” of creativity has at least two axes.

One axis marks the span of distance between imagining something and realizing it. (Conceive-to-Provide)

The other axis spans the distances between desiring something of a type and embracing a sample of that type. (Intend-to-Accept)

Crossing either axis towards an accepted provision introduces the opportunity for management to add important additional progress towards the value of the making for parties other than the maker. That is, the importance of the creativity moves from being intrinsic to being extrinsic. © 2014 Malcolm Ryder / archestra research

CONCEIVE

PROVIDE

INTEND

ACCEPT

Development

Formulation

Projection

Instantiation

(Specify requirements)

(Supply a version)

(Model & Prototype)

(Proof of Concept)

The workspace of creativity can usually be recognized as a few generic areas in which histories, alternatives, and changes occur. These can influence each other as inspirations,

resources, or constraints even without a shared goal.

Time To Stop Just Saying “Creative”

Talking about creativity is not difficult or complicated at all when we simply state that we observed someone making something in a spontaneous and inventive way.

But then someone imposes judgmental criteria on that activity. Whether being explicit or not, they require the output of the “making” to be useful in some particular way, or unprecedented in some particular way – otherwise they will not call the effort “creative”.

That imposed perspective says that the effort to make something must focus on a result that is both “original” and an “innovation”

Some even go so far as to insist that the progression of the effort must proceed in steps that either are unpredictable by observers, or are patterned by production rules not used before to generate the expected outcome. Then, if the outcome is not meaningful to some party other than the maker, the effort is still not deemed “creative”.

Misguidance

The pressure to promote that perspective comes from “legitimate” interests: • Asset management seeks offerings that have differentiation making them

more desirable or free of ordinary limitations

• Training seeks to make advantageous production capabilities available-on-demand in greater supply

• Research seeks to determine why and how phenomena can predictably occur, persist, and evolve

But those interests typify the intent to use creativity, and otherwise have no descriptive relevance to what actually constitutes being creative.

Time To Stop Just Saying “Creative”

In effect, that “utility” perspective on “creativity” is additionally projecting only certain kinds of cases, where:

• a result acknowledged as being importantly different

• is a first example of it,

• obtained from an intentional effort of construction.

The three criteria are used to exclude actions and results that do not comply with them.

Naturally, there will be cases where the evaluator is not able to understand whether or how importance has resulted, or whether the instance is the first or not, or whether its generation was not just an accident or coincidence.

The evaluator’s uncertainty will be the explanation for a failure to “recognize” creativity...

Back to Basics

The most telling contrast to “creating” is “assembling”.

The logic of relying on assembling is entirely based on the presumption that both all parts and all their arrangements have been explicitly predefined for some level of competency held by the constructor.

Dissimilarly, the logic of relying on creating is based on the expectation that at least some parts and at least some of their arrangements have not been predefined – and instead will get defined both because of and during the constructive effort.

So let’s talk about Making.

What is “Making”

Discovering the value of some kind of manipulation:• Detecting• Classifying• Proving

Deciding what to do with that value:• Assembling• Choreographing• Orchestrating

Organizing provision of that condition, in relation to a purpose or occasion:• Producing• Versioning

Associating the effect of that “doing” with a desired condition, as a prerequisite or cause of the condition:• Assigning• Staging• Composing• Directing

Many of the terms above have practical synonyms. The terms here are chosen specifically because of their meaning to the idea of “production”.

MAKING is a spectrum of production activity.Here, the spectrum extends from left to right.However, creative work is done in both directions along the spectrum, sometimes collaboratively, and often simultaneously. Different points along the spectrum influence each other, both proactively and reactively.

Creativity operates along a learning path

• Progress in creativity is not based on proximity to a predefined conclusion.

• Progress in creativity is based on reaching decisions that become both useful and persistent in making.

• Reaching those decisions means that further kinds of effort are enabled, or that the same kind of effort can be repeated effectively.

• The usefulness of those decisions may change, however, as additional decisions and efforts are made for other reasons or at other times.

• Since earlier decisions may be revised or replaced, the direction or course of the effort may also change.

• As a “progression”, the significance of these changes is an increase in the viability of a recognized way to generate the results obtained so far.

Creativity both concentrates and links points in the stages of production

The decision-making in creativity occurs as balances that are accepted in the relative strengths of envisioning versus execution.

At different points along the spectrum of production, envisioning means different things, and execution means different things.

Creativity plants effort along a production spectrum (left to right) that continually compares what is envisioned and what is executed.

Point A Point B Point C

envisioning Choices Requirements Values

execution Analyses Plans Goal

con

clusio

n

© 2014 Malcolm Ryder / archestra research

The balancing of envisioning and executingIs influenced by experiences that guide the creative maker to select, arrange and emphasize some alternatives instead of others, during production.

PRODUCTION DYNAMICS

© 2014 Malcolm Ryder / archestra research

CREATIVE SENSIBILITY

INFLUENCE DRIVER PRACTICE TASK INTELLIGENCE EFFECT

domain origination evaluated managed referenced intended

Cultural Needs Implement Apply Prioritizing and Logic Exploit Conditions and Opportunity

Speculative Scenarios Design Configure Modeling and Strategy Develop Capability and Motive

Empirical Resources Investigate Experiment Testing and Memory Derive Options and Means

Sensitive to experiences

Sensitive to politics

Sensitive to policies

Sensitive to methods

Sensitive to concepts

Sensitive to environments

The consciousness of a Maker is also known as a “sensibility”. Creativity is based in sensibility. Sensibility is organic and can be cultivated. But cultivation is not a requirement of creativity. Creativity is a sensibility’s activity-based response to influences.

© 2014 Malcolm Ryder / archestra research

Sensibility affects what resolutionsoccur along the production spectrum. Numerous resolutions may eventually support each other systemically, creating a sustainable “equilibrium” that channels production to a conclusive result.

© 2014 Malcolm Ryder / archestra research

Activity and techniques are invented or subscribed to provide, match or reconcile envisioning and execution in a persistent way that accumulates support towards production targets.

This articulation of the creative space maps Making as creative production.

© 2014 Malcolm Ryder / archestra research

Creative Production Facts

“Making” can be subscribed by Production for the purpose of a targeted outcome.

Making spans a spectrum of production activity.

Creativity is a mode of making that does not need a targeted outcome in order to generate value. Pursuit of a targeted outcome is simply an opportunity to subscribe creativity.

Creativity can be very non-linear and still significantly affect a linear approach to progress across the production spectrum.

Navigating the creative space can: • follow paths staked out by earlier efforts, • establish new paths, • and blend them endlessly according to encounters with a variety of

identifiable influences.

© 2014 Malcolm Ryder / archestra research

mryder@malcolmryder.com