Stephen Shapiro argues that constraints actually boost creativity, not limit it. He shows how brainstorming uses for a brick generates more ideas when you add random contexts like 'on the body' or 'in a marriage' than when you brainstorm freely. One client pulled a different industry each day to reframe their product, producing breakthrough ideas faster.
Chapters
There's an expression we hear all the time in the world of creativity, think outside the box. There is this belief that if we give people a clean sheet of paper on which to innovate, they will come up with better solutions. But in fact, this is not true. When you give people a clean sheet of paper, they are less likely to develop breakthrough solutions and are more likely to come up with things, things that they already know. Structure enhances innovation and creativity. So you don't want people to think outside the box. What you want to do is you want to give them a better box in which to innovate. Now, there's an activity I do that is very simple, yet it's extremely powerful. Let me try to explain it here. Imagine for a moment I'm holding a brick in my hand. What I'll have people do is brainstorm ways in which we can use a brick. So let's say that's the problem. How do we use a brick? People are going to come up with a bunch of different solutions. They're either going to imagine that they could use the brick in the patio if they're missing a brick, or they could use it as a paperweight, or if they break the brick in half, maybe they could use it as bookends. Now, what we find is when we ask people to give us what their solutions were, there is a lot of overlap. We get a lot of very similar types of solutions. So I have people do this, exercise a different way. In this time, instead of looking at the brick, which is trying to find a solution through our understanding of the problem, our experience with that problem, and the attributes of the problem, what we do is we connect to something random. So, for example, let's say we wanted to find uses of a brick on the body, in the kitchen, in the bathroom, on vacation, or in a marriage. So imagine for a moment you wanted to use a brick on the body. Well, what you could do is you could put it on your head to improve your posture. You could use it to pump up your biceps. You could, if you had really rough skin, use it as loofah or use it to buff your nails. You could strap it to your feet if you wanted a few extra hinges and give you that extra height. There's a lot of different ways that you could use a brick. What we find is, when we use this second method, more structure. Not thinking outside the box, but rather constraining them around a particular random context. The diversity of solutions increases, the value of the solutions increase, and there's a reason for this. Steve Jobs once said that creativity is just having enough dots to connect, dots being ideas or experiences. And the reason why creative people are so is they've either had more experiences or they've thought more about their experiences. So when we make these connections, when we actually define things more clearly, we actually enhance creativity. There's a client of mine that is in the commodity business that used to brainstorm ways in which they could use their product. And they would just ask people every day, okay, what are all the different ways that we could use our product? And they would end up with some very interesting ideas, but nothing revolutionary. So what they did was they took the time to brainstorm 200 different industries or roles. Tollbooth collectors, nurses, libraries, offices. And every day, they would pull one of those rolls off the wall and they would say, how can we use our product in a library? How can we use our product in a hospital? That context, that constraint, actually gave them greater breakthrough solutions. So you don't want people to think outside the box. You want to find a better box. Or as Albert Einstein reputedly said, if I had an hour to save the world, I would spend 59 minutes defining the problem, one minute finding solutions. From my experience, most organizations are running around spending 60 minutes on problems that don't matter. Give them the box. Have them rally around what matters most. This is the thing which will accelerate your innovation efforts.
