Tighten the limits to force better ideas.
We could all use more budget and more time, right? Maybe not. Constraints are all around us, and they are often the source of the very best ideas. So, rather than seeking to remove constraints, try welcoming and embracing them.
“When forced to work within a strict framework the imagination is taxed to its utmost – and will produce its richest ideas. Given total freedom the work is likely to sprawl.” – TS Eliot
Think of a current project or task. Would it be easier to complete it with more money, more resources, more time? It's tempting to wish away constraints like these.
The panacea for creativity is often thought to be unconstrained thinking – no boundaries, no rules, blue skies. But the truth is, we’d be lost without constraints. And if you look, you’ll start to see them absolutely everywhere.
Some constraints are time-based - a good example is TED talks. The golden rule for those doing a TED talk is that you must keep it within 18 minutes. It’s one of the key reasons behind the format’s success. 18 minutes is long enough to be serious and short enough to hold people’s attention. It turns out that this length also works incredibly well online. It’s the length of a good coffee break.
But the main reason is that the 18-minute length also works much like the way Twitter forces people to be disciplined in what they write. By forcing speakers who are used to going on for 45 minutes to bring it down to 18, you
get them to really think about what they want to say. What is the key point they want to communicate? It brings discipline.
Another example is Twitter’s (original model of) 140 characters. You have to be very concise, but you can communicate a lot of things really successfully.
In a business setting, our two biggest constraints are usually budget and time. Unconstrained resources would be nice, right? Like more money, more staff, more time?
It's hard to get out of this way of thinking, which is why for many the biggest constraint we face is our own mindset.
There are many areas of innovation that are driven by constraints. Think about whether we'd be making such great progress on renewable energy if there were unlimited oil reserves underground.
We challenge you to think differently about constraints: rather than seeking to remove them, we should welcome and embrace them. And we should proactively add more constraints to force our thinking down unusual and innovative paths.
Researchers found that when you put up a fence around a playground, children will use the entire space – they’ll feel safe to play all the way up to the edges. But if those walls are removed, creating a wide-open playground, the space the children choose to play in contracts: they stay towards the middle and they stick together – because that’s what feels safe.
This is what happens in the creative process. When there are no clear limits in the brief itself, we aren’t sure about what boundaries to explore and push up against. This means that we are stimulated by rules and boundaries.
This technique offers a quick route to innovative suggestions. It challenges participants to be much more bold and groundbreaking than usual, in response to the unusually harsh constraints they are presented with.
Constraints are often the source of our best ideas, think of Twitter's original 140 character limit or the 18 minute cap on a TED Talk. Ask people to list every constraint on a current project, then make them more severe to force more radical, ambitious approaches, and see what new ideas that provokes.
You could introduce the exercise like this. Think about the project you're working on and write down its constraints as a list: a limited budget, a deadline, a certain number of people on your team.
Then think about what other constraints you could introduce, or how you could make the existing ones more severe. On budget, what would you do with half of it, and could you find more creative ways to deliver the same outcome? On the deadline, what would you do if it were suddenly brought forward, what could you still deliver, and what could you strip out to simplify the idea and meet it? That is a good way to spot the non-essential elements that could be added in a later phase. On resources, what would you do if you suddenly lost half your team, and how would you deliver with severely depleted resources?
This technique forces you to be more creative within constraints. The more you try it, the more you realise that creative thinking happens inside the box, by working within what you have.
Then, using the worksheet or just making notes on flipchart paper as a small group discussion, get people to list every constraint on a current project and make each one more severe: half the budget, a brought-forward deadline, fewer people. The harsher constraints force more radical, inventive approaches. Then review the ideas with your experienced head back on.
This is a good creative thinking tool for use in an ideation workshop or for problem solving. You can also use it when a group thinks that it's limited because of its resources - you can reframe it and say that it's precisely those limits that can provide the route to creative solutions.
Using this tool with a skilled facilitator means that discussions are focused, time is used efficiently, and the group moves toward consensus, making the session productive and impactful.
