The model identifies four ways of creating novelty which apply across all types of evolutionary systems, and includes the creation of semiotic novelty in the process of imagination. These reorganisations are:
(1) the recombination of existing elements,(2) the mutation of an existing element, which means a recombination of its constituents,(3) the speciation of an element into subtypes, and(4) the relocation or generalisation of an element into a new context.
Note that creation is a violation of the hitherto, and corresponds to the mathematical notion of error.