Understanding the universal principles of change is pivotal to grasping the essence of creativity. These principles, or generators, serve as the fundamental laws that govern how elements are combined and transformed to generate innovative outcomes. From contiguity to hyperphysicality, each generator offers a unique perspective on the process of change and creation. By delving into the intricacies of these generators, individuals can unlock new avenues for exploration and experimentation, fostering a culture of creativity and innovation. Whether applied in business, art, science, or everyday life, the generators provide a framework for breaking free from conventional thinking and embracing the unexpected. Through hands-on experimentation and exploration, individuals can harness the power of these principles to unleash their creative potential and drive transformative change.
Change lies at the core of creativity because it serves as the catalyst for generativity. Generativity, the ability to produce new and innovative outcomes, relies on change to enact its transformative power. Across various fields, from art to science to business, generativity operates based on certain combinational and transformational principles, which can be thought of a as high level "laws." These laws are the fundamental rules that guide the creative process, shaping the emergence of novel ideas, objects, and processes.
In essence, these laws are the underlying principles that govern how elements are combined and transformed to generate something new and counterintuitive. They dictate the ways in which existing components can be rearranged, repurposed, or reimagined to produce innovative outcomes.
The importance of these laws transcends disciplinary boundaries, as they underpin creativity in all its forms. Whether it's the combination of products in business, the fusion of musical motifs in composition, the recombination of genetic material in biology, or the synthesis of disparate ideas in philosophy, these laws shape the creative process at its core. Knowing these laws can ignite a culture of experimentation and risk-taking, and enable creators to break free from conventional thinking and explore uncharted territories—even to push the boundaries of what is possible.
You might think that creativity, like the imagination, is infinite; there is an endless number of possible outcomes in any cultural field.
However, once you boil things down you will find there are only a certain limited class of operations that can happen if you want to change one thing to another. These are called generators. There are 11 of them:
1. Contiguity
2. Fusion
3. Penetration
4. Envelopment
5. Multiplicity
6. Separation
7. Lack
8. Distortion
9. Switching
10. Activation
11. Hyperphysicality
They are called generators because they serve to generate, give rise to or create new ideas, constructs or mental representations. Here is a more comprehensive description of these generators:
Definition: Two or more elements are brought together in form or function into a single construct with neither element being modified significantly.
Interpretations:
• Attachment, co-presence, adjacency
• Coincidence
Related terms: Joined, conjoined, associated, touching, sitting on, hanging under, stuck together, affixed, conjugated, coupled, entwined, fastened, interlaced, knitted, spliced, tacked on, woven, yoked, bound together, being together, hanging with, spending time with, standing alongside.
Definition: Two or more elements are brought together in form or function into a single construct with the elements themselves being modified significantly.
Interpretations:
• Merging, conflation
• Unification
Related terms: blended, homogenised, coalesced, intermixed, morphed into one.
Definition: An element moves inside or is inside in form or function the boundary of another element, with the elements themselves not being modified significantly.
Interpretations:
• Piercing, invasion, violation, incursion
• Embedding, nesting
Related terms: Stabbing, skewering, pricking, poking, inserting, jabbing, shafting, sticking into, spearing, perforating, goring, infiltrating, drilling, impaling, boring, probing, getting inside of, nestling within.
Definition: An element surrounds or moves to surround in form or function another element, with the elements themselves not being modified significantly.
• Swallowing
• Surrounding
• Holding
• Shielding, hiding
Related terms: Eating, consuming, devouring, flooding, swamping, swarming, engulfing, embracing, hugging, enclosing, encompassing, encasing, wrapping around, clamping, gripping, squeezing, clasping, clinching, clutching, protecting.
Definition: An element is repeated in form or function.
Interpretations:
• Duplication
• Parallelism, simultaneity, co-existence of similar things
Related terms: Echoed, rhythmic, iterated, recapitulated, recurring, redoing, doubling, tripling, quadrupling, reproducing, layering, adding an extra part.
Definition: The form or function of a single element is split into two or more parts.
Interpretations:
• Detachment
• Isolation
• Prevention, obstacle
Related terms: Divided, divided from, broken in two, broken into pieces, diced, sliced, minced, splintered, bifurcated, branched, forked, coming apart, coming undone, cracking, dismembering, disuniting, diverging, divorcing, parting, creating a barrier, walling off, pulling apart, rending, ripping, severing.
Definition: An element is missing a part or deficient or nullified in form or function.
Interpretations:
• Absence, deletion, removal, loss
• Inadequacy, defectiveness, failure
• Destruction, death (to be “lacked”)
Related terms: Missing an ingredient, dying, wounded, broken down, gone wrong, losing energy, slowing down, cocking up, slipping up, conking out, deteriorating, fizzling out, faltering, falling through, jamming, stalling, ailing.
Definition: An element is exaggerated in form or function.
Interpretations:
• Non-proportional warping
• Proportional shrinkage
• Proportional expansion
Related terms: Twisted, stretched, enlarged, shrunken, miniaturised, distended, bulging, melted, bent, buckled, contorted, crushed, deformed, disfigured, ugly, mangled, misshapen.
Definition: An element is moved, replaced by another or inverted in form or function.
Interpretations:
• Rearrangement, shifting, displacement
• Inversion, reversal
• Substitution, swapping
Related terms: Moving position, changing direction, deviating, veering, relocating, replacing, flipping, exchanging, interchanging, transposing, transferring, alternating, putting upside-down, being topsy-turvy, turning inside-out, turning the tables, making back-to-front.
Definition: A cause has an effect.
Interpretations:
• Reacting to an action
• Triggering a response
Related terms: Causation, mobilisation, animating, stimulating, rousing, propelling, turning on, prompting, making something happen.
Definition: An element exhibits a physically impossible form or performs a physically impossible function.
Interpretations:
• Magic
• The impossible
Related terms: The supernatural, the preternatural, the unnatural, the miraculous, the paranormal, the superhuman, the transcendental, the unearthly, the supermundane.
Now aside from hyperphysicality, all of these principles govern structures and processes found routinely in life (though a number of real phenomena are perceived by normal human minds to be essentially hyperphysical, such as magnetism, mirages and the fact that rain clouds float, along with much modern technology as Arthur C. Clarke’s “Third Law” indicates).
For instance, a pair of spectacles consist of glass lenses with a metal/plastic frame—the product of contiguity. A mug of white coffee is water, processed coffee beans and milk – a fusion of elements. Press a doorbell and a bell or buzzer is heard—activation. The universe inevitably is composed of structures and processes that operate in this way.
What constructs a creative idea is the application of one (or more) of these principles in a counterintuitive fashion—that is to say, in a non-routine or unexpected way. So this means separation of something that is not intuitively separated; lack in something that is not intuitively lacking; distortion of something that is that is not intuitively distorted; multiplicity of something that is that is not intuitively multiplied; switching of something that is not intuitively switched; contiguity of two or more things that are not intuitively contiguous; penetration or envelopment of something that is not intuitively penetrated or enveloped; fusion of two or more things that are not intuitively fused; and a cause that does not intuitively have that effect, or an effect that does not intuitively have that cause.
This is the simplest way to express the basic logic of the generators.
In order to explore creative possibilities, one or more of the generators must be used. And to optimise your creative process, you should play with and experiment with all of them.
This can be done when you are tackling particular projects. For example, the well-known SCAMPER method for ideation in business uses some of the generators. And it can be done as a training methodology, to stretch your mind or your employees' minds creatively.