Studies of creativity have tended to focus on isolated individuals,
under the assumption that it can be defined as a characteristic of an
extraordinary person, product, or process. Existing computational models
of creative behavior have inherited this emphasis on independent
generative processes. However, an increasing multidisciplinary consensus
regards creativity as a systems property, and extends the focus of inquiry
to include the interaction between generative individuals and evaluative
social groups. To acknowledge the complementarity of evaluative processes
by social groups, experts, and peers, this paper presents experimentation
with a framework of design as a social activity. This model is used to
inspect phenomena associated with creativity in the interaction between
designers and their societies. In particular, this paper describes the
strength of social ties as a mechanism of social organization, and
explores its potential relation to creativity in a computational social
simulation. These experiments illustrate ways in which the role of
designers as change agents of their societies can be largely determined by
how the evaluating group self-organizes over time. A key potential
implication is that the isolated characteristics of designers may be
insufficient to formulate conclusions about the nature and effects of
their behavior. Instead, causality could be attributed to situational
factors that define the relationship between designers and their
evaluators.