Except to consumers, anxiety over "innovation", whether as an input or as an output, has been one reason why creativity has become more difficult to understand and use by parties other than the creators... To reverse the damage, the packaging that misrepresents or disguises creativity must be stripped away.

1. Creativity UnWrapped
An Ontology of Production
An archestra notebook
© 2014 Malcolm Ryder / archestra research

2. 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.

3. CONCEIVE
PROVIDE
INTEND
ACCEPT
Creative Space
Creativity 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…

4. Creative WorkSpace
Creativity explores any of the ways that making
something 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.

5. 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”.

6. 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.

7. 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...

8. 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.

9. 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.

10. 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.

11. 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
conclusion
© 2014 Malcolm Ryder / archestra research

12. The balancing of
envisioning and executing
Is 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

13. 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

14. Sensibility affects what resolutions
occur 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

15. 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

16. 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.

17. © 2014 Malcolm Ryder / archestra research
mryder@malcolmryder.com