Worldmaking is a fundamental practice and an activity that all human activity and creativity participates in.
By focusing on problems and their solution, we are missing the full scope of what is actually happening in the dance between problems and outcomes.
A world is emerging — a specific mode of practice is emerging. This is especially true when innovating: new affordances are emerging alongside new outcomes. As these affordances are stabilized and generalized into habits, practices, concepts, and environments, a world is emerging.
This world is emerging as a complex world (beyond a simple good-bad distinction) because problems as assemblages never generate a singular outcome but a field of potential outcomes. Only some of these outcomes are the ones we like — accidents, errors, and a world of unintended possibilities (good, bad, neutral, and undecidable) are emerging.
Ironically, it is these outcomes — the unintended solutions— the exaptations — that will lead to the most innovation.
Thinking of problems as that which must be solved and focusing on “the solution” (singular) leads to both a fundamental error of what you are doing (worldmaking, not solution-making) and makes you blind to the greatest source of innovation (the emergent unintended outcomes).
This is why we advocate that we move away from “Problem-Solution” approaches to “Problem-World” approaches for innovation.
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