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What is a relation? A relation is not something that simply connects existing things—it is the fundamental creative force that makes things what they are. Relations are ontologically real, meaning they exist as genuine features of reality rather than mere abstractions or concepts we impose on the world. When we speak of relations in the context of creativity and innovation, we are pointing to the dynamic, processual nature of reality itself, where the connections between elements (themselves processes) are more fundamental than the elements themselves.
Relations are the "middle" that we always already inhabit—the space between subject and object, self and world, where creative emergence happens (that gives rise to subject and object, etc.). They are what the philosopher Evan Thompson describes as the "patterns, networks, organizations, configurations or webs" that constitute reality at every scale. Relations are both what comes after things (connecting them) and what comes before things (making them possible).
What we directly sense and experience as the world is itself a relation (in this case, an “affordance”). When you walk across a carpet, the "walkability" you experience is not a property stored in the carpet waiting to be discovered, nor is it simply in your mind. The walkability emerges from the relation between your embodied capacities, your intentions, and the material configuration of the environment. This relational experience is not secondary to some more "real" underlying reality—it IS reality as it shows up for you.
Emergent Agency: In relational configurations, agency—the capacity to effect and be affected—does not reside in any single component but emerges from the configuration itself. Like a soccer game, you cannot find the meaning or logic in the ball, field, or individual players alone; it emerges from their particular relations and their emergent logic.
System Causation: Relations exhibit what can also be called "downward causation"—the emergent relational whole has the capacity to shape its parts. When people and things are brought into stable relations, the relation changes both the people and the things. This is why collaboration doesn't just combine pre-existing creative capacities; it makes its collaborators.
Dynamic Processuality: Relations are not static connections but ongoing processes. It's more accurate to speak of "relating" rather than "relations"—dynamic becomings rather than static beings. Everything we are part of is a creative becoming, a dynamic relation-dominant process – a “strange loop”:
Understanding the primacy of relations fundamentally shifts how we approach creativity and innovation. Instead of focusing on individual creative people or discrete innovative objects, we begin to work with the relational dynamics that give rise to novel possibilities (novel configurations and their propensities).
Creative processes are not about having ideas that we then implement in the world. They are about participating in relation-dominant configurations that tend toward emergent novelty. This means the designer becomes what Brian Massumi calls "a helpmate to emergence"—someone who works with relational dynamics rather than imposing predetermined visions.
If creativity emerges from relational configurations, then our focus shifts from developing individual creative capacities to cultivating the conditions for novel relations to form and stabilize. This involves attending to the assemblages of environments, tools, practices, concepts, and collaborators that give rise to creative possibilities (configurational and ecosystemic creativity).
Consider the evolution of flight in dinosaurs. Flight did not emerge because feathers, wings, or bones were individually designed for flying. Rather, flight emerged as a novel relation between elements that were originally unintended for flight—feathers, limbs, gravity, air density, and trees. The relation of flight then shaped and transformed these elements, leading to the development of wings, specialized bones, and other features suited to the novel relational activity.
Similarly, when we speak of innovation in organizations, we're not talking about collecting creative individuals in a room. We're describing the cultivation of relation-dominant assemblages where novel possibilities can emerge from the dynamic interaction of people, tools, environments, practices, and concepts working together in ways that exceed any individual's intentions or control.
The creative process is always happening in what we call "the middle"—that space of active relations where new possibilities emerge through experimental engagement rather than predetermined design. Learning to work skillfully with relations means learning to participate in creativity as a fundamentally collaborative, more-than-human process of emergent worldmaking.
Sources and Connections to Explore: Difference and Repetition Gilles Deleuze,Relations: An Anthropological Account Marilyn Strathern, Mind in Life Evan Thompson, Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit Karetak, Tester & Tagalik.
See: Assemblage, Configurations, Emergence, Transversal
