Definition of Blocking

What is Blocking?

‍If creativity is the process by which something new comes into being, then the new needs to confront the existing processes of repetition of the same and the similar. We live in a dynamic and spontaneously organizing world of ongoing processes which mainly involve repetitions of the similar (change-in-degree). These processes are quite robust and resilient. Often try as we might to catalyze change and the new and the already existing and the similar come back...

The question for those engaging with creative processes is: How do we disrupt these stable propensities to allow for the emergence of qualitative novelty (change-in-kind)? A key technique to stop the repeating of what is known is blocking. 

Blocking is a technique of developing and putting in place experimental negative rules to not do something. Creativity is often mistakenly defined as being about “complete freedom” or “no rules,” but this is the very opposite of what is needed. Innovation requires strong rules to refuse existing rules, patterns, practices, processes, tools, habits, logics, concepts, environments, bodies, and dispositifs.

Because blocking involves the refusal of existing things, it first requires knowing what exists across multiple levels and logics. Thus, blocking is necessarily preceded by the task of disclosure.

Blocking some critical aspect of what exists forces affordances to unintentionally exceed their worlds—this is the process of exaptation.

Blocking is a refusal and the beginning of a process of experimentation: 

• “If we no longer can do this, what can we now do?”
• “If this no longer has this purpose, what else can it do?” 

Blocking, while it might sound simple or even crude, is a sophisticated form of what can also be called  “enabling constraints." It enables a difference to be nurtured by radically constraining the norm, but only if the choice of what to block is well chosen. 

Here is a simple example of blocking to try right now: When you go to cook your next meal: Choose a vegetable that you have in abundance -- say carrots or onions. The goal is to make a dish that only uses this one ingredient (plus, water, oil, salt, and heat as needed). Here we are blocking the concept that a dish involves multiple ingredients.

How many distinct and different flavors, textures and forms can you experimentally coax into emergence and stabilize as something unique from this one vegetable? Now assemble a dish that uses all of these in differing ratios. At a minimum, can you experiment to get three unique qualities to emerge, which then can be combined in various processes and ratios to make a dish?

Blocking is a refusal and the beginning of a process of experimentation: “if we no longer can do this, what can we now do?” Blocking, while it might sound simple or crude is a sophisticated form of “enabling constraint”. It enables a difference to be nurtured by constraining the norm, but only if the choice of what to block is well chosen. Blocking is a nuanced activity that first requires knowing the existing rules patterns techniques etc. so that they can be effectively blocked. The key to blocking is to disclose an existing paradigm or world, and this is itself a phase (Disclose) of innovation.

See: Disclose, World, Rules, Enabling Constraint.