The 'Why' (Part 5) is the final part of Creativities, connecting and interacting with the previous four. It addresses the purpose of creativity in terms of individual motivation (the personal why), and the changing dynamics of products and markets (the productional why). We argue that whilst purpose is typically the starting point of the creative process, it is also likely to change over a creative career: purpose might lead to creative action, or it might follow from action and the 'why' of creativity might be discovered afresh or reinvented. We consider how different personal why's might converge and then pull apart and how the personal why is affected and inflected by the productional why. We consider these interactive purposes from two angles. Firstly, do we continue to follow the same path, or try something different? Along this pathway the productional why becomes stronger, either reinforcing our current direction or pulling us onto a different course. Or, do we try to retain control or accept a looser, more adaptive mindset? On this pathway, the personal why becomes less dominant, and more flexible. These possibilities are summarised in the Creative Pathways Matrix framework with the 'same or different' options mapped on the vertical axis and the 'tight or loose' options mapped horizontally • The first pathway in the CPM is 'exit ramp', in which a strong productional why allows the business to continue without its founder • The second pathway, 'launch pad' occurs when personal motivation is strong, but is diverted into a different productional why, resulting in a new product or service being launched • The third pathway, 'sell-out', follows what happens when both the personal and productional whys lose their grip, and the creative individual and creative business pursue a more erratic but still productive range of directions • Finally, we explore two sides of the 'no change' pathway - where the personal why and productional why remain undiminished. First, what happens when the productional and personal why fall out of alignment and the creator is locked in and gets stuck with 'no exit'? More optimistically, what happens when productional and personal why are dynamically aligned and it becomes possible for both the creator and the product to grow together. We call this the 'scale up'.
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