I'm not sure that's an absolute. New technology opens the mind to new concepts. The experience of using a particular tool leads you to think about how to use it. The tactile interaction with a piece of equipment affects your thinking beyond what sitting in an ivory tower would.
What you are describing is what I called the transformational perspective.
If the knowledge and tools you have are incongruent, then the right tool can make everything click. But, if you don't have the requisite knowledge, then it doesn't matter what tools you are given.
How does a new ultra fast autofocus system affect you if are studying composition of still subjects in a studio? Probably very little. However, if you are a sports photographer the extra speed could unlock a new workflow.
Transformative technology is only transformative if you have context.
The conceptual perspective, on the other hand, is concerned with value judgement. For example: this picture I just took is boring; maybe if I climb up that hill I can get a more interesting perspective.
No tool is going to tell you that your picture is boring or climbing up the hill can give you a more interesting perspective. That has to come from you.
Creativity isn’t a purely intellectual exercise. If you assert that creativity is a generalization of the scientific method then it’s experimental and experiential by definition.
I understand where you're coming from. I once shared those misconceptions of science and creativity because of poor pedagogy in school.
My language classes focused on narrative and persuasive writing, while my science classes focused on calculations and testing.
Through narrative and persuasive writing, I was encouraged to impose myself on the world. That is, make my story or push my beliefs.
And in science class I was given a "hypothesis" and through the act of "experiment", I had to gather data to show that it was true. But what I was actually doing was verifying a known relation. We never examined the difference between hypothesis and conjecture or negative experimental results, because the purpose of my science classes was to teach principles, not the scientific method. So in this way, science became the study of following steps to get positive results.
But this is not the reality of science and creativity.
The purpose of science isn't to support a hypothesis through experiment like a persuasive essay is to supporting a position. You aren't trying different techniques, experimentally or otherwise, to get a positive result.
The purpose of science is to prove your knowledge (i.e., how do you know what you know).
That's why PhD programs have what's called a thesis defense, where you must defend your knowledge to a doctoral panel.
The same concept applies to art. The intention should not be to make a beautiful film, but to make a film to understand what beauty is. Whether the film is beautiful or not is dependent on how well you came to understand beauty. The film is your defense of that knowledge.
So when I assert that creativity is a generalization of the scientific method it's because I view both as epistemological exercises, not experimental or experiential exercises, as you put it.
Creativity comes out of you, it's not something of happenstance.