Boosting Creativity Through Constraints

Conventional wisdom holds that the best way to boost a team's creativity is to unshackle them from constraints. The less they have to worry about, the more open they'll be with their ideas, the theory goes. Budget? Unlimited! Ideas from outside? Bring 'em on! Different business model? Consider it entertained! Unfortunately this approach can actually be counter-productive.

Some constraints are realities that must to be dealt with — laws of physics, or perhaps a budget. Other constraints may seem immovable but upon inspection are actually assumptions based on the past — your business model, or which customers and needs you serve, for example.

Constraints have a Goldilocks quality: too many and you will indeed suffocate in stale thinking, too few and you risk a rambling vision quest. The key to spurring creativity isn't the removal of all constraints. Ideally you should impose only those constraints (beyond the truly non-negotiable ones) that move you toward clarity of purpose.

If a constraint enhances your understanding of the problem scope and why you're doing what you're doing, leave it in. Insights into user needs, for example, are great because they provide focus and rationale. If the constraint confuses or overly narrows scope without good reason, remove or replace it. Don't be afraid to experiment with different combinations of constraints; it's not always easy to tell ahead of time what the right mix will be for a particular project or circumstance.

Beautiful, brutal clarity is your goal.

There are no hard and fast rules about finding that "just right" mix to achieve this, but here are some examples of how clarity and creativity can be enhanced.

Focus on the Vitals In Silicon Valley start-ups a common philosophy these days is "mobile first": create the mobile app or mobile version of the web site before you do the "full" version. Partly this is driven by the fact that many of these start-ups' customers will be accessing the new service primarily through a mobile device, and may never look at the web site on a desktop browser. But a side benefit is that a phone's small screen forces discipline about what's really critical to communicate to the customer, and which functionality customers will really need.

You can apply this simplicity-oriented mindset even if you're not making a mobile app. What is the one thing you want your customers to know or do at any given point of interacting with your business? If you could only communicate with them via a 3.5" screen, or a business card, or a 6 second Vine movie — what would you say, what would you ask of them, and what would you want them to feel afterward? Once you've found that, you may be surprised that all the other stuff that once seemed important now seems superfluous.

Change Your Habits We tend to get set in our ways, both as individuals and organizations. These habits are often shaped by the constraints we impose on ourselves or are imposed on us. Changing the constraints can shake you out of your habits so that you see the world and opportunities with fresh eyes.

I'm an avid photographer, and I recently purchased a camera that has a fixed lens (I can't swap a different lens onto it) which doesn't even zoom. Why would I pay over $1000 for a camera with this inconvenience when much cheaper SLRs with their panoply of lenses can do so much more?

There are many benefits to the fixed-lens camera. Taking pictures is faster because there are fewer things to adjust than on a complex SLR, and the constrained view of the lens means my mind's-eye becomes trained at anticipating what the lens will see. I can react more fluidly to rapidly changing scenes, like when shooting on a busy street. I'm also forced to physically engage with my surroundings — I can't stand in one spot and lazily twist the zoom in and out. I've got to move myself around, and this opens up points of view I would have missed if I'd stuck to my initial position.

Get Uncomfortable Breaking habits is hard, and sometimes it takes a new stimulus to provoke change. In the workshops I occasionally run with companies, many activities focus on getting teams to challenge their habitual assumptions and apply a different set of constraints to how they think about the problems they face. In this way they often come up with solutions that surprise them. A service company may think about what would happen if they created a physical product to meet customer needs, for instance, or started offering the service the way a well-known brand in a very different industry would.

In the documentary It Might Get Loud, guitarist Jack White argues that technology makes us lazy (like the zoom lens on my SLR), and laziness is the enemy of creativity. He purposefully uses low-quality instruments that he has to fight with to get the sound and attitude he wants. "If it takes me three steps to get to the organ, then I'll put it four steps away. I'll have to run faster, I'll have to push myself harder to get to it." You may think you're making your team's life easier by removing constraints, but forcing a little hustle is good for creativity.

Creativity needs some grit, in both senses of the word: an irritant to get the ball rolling (like a grain of sand births an oyster pearl), and persistence to push through to completion.

So don't be afraid of constraints. They can be your friend, your muse even. Thinking outside the box is all well and good, but if the box is the right size and shape it might help, not hinder, your creativity.