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Creativity Loves Constraints
Props to Marissa Mayer, Google Customer Products Director, for inspiring us to spread the word on creativity loving constraints. Check out this video of Marissa Mayer talking about creativity loving constraints as well as and other great innovation points.
Entrepreneurs are an endowed bunch. No really - let’s be honest. They’re ambitious, visionary, risk-taking, detail-oriented, driven, motivated and creative. They’re also highly constrained.
Similarly, working at a startup, there are constraints everywhere. We face tight deadlines, are often under-staffed and given limited resources. And our creativity thrives as a result.
At first this may seem contradictory. The assumption is that creativity is fostered when it is boundless. But that’s not it at all.
It is the ambition and the vision of the entrepreneur that forms the dream, it is constraints and limitations that force us to be creative in order to realize our dreams.
When starting small, executing our dreams, constraints are the things that force us to be even more creative.
Still don’t believe? Here’s an example: where established and large corporations would scale back projects, small startups push harder, add more and even expand projects because of the ambition and vision (and well, being able to scale back projects is quite a luxury, truth be told).
In our experience, when faced with the constraints of tight deadlines and tighter resources, we were not only creative about the things we were trying to accomplish, but also the way we accomplished those things.
The point? The creativity of our vision isn’t the only creativity that matters - the creativity of our design and execution also matters. Moreover, by being constrained, the latter type of creativity becomes more and more important.
A true story: Return of the King
The making of the final chapter in the Lord of the Rings movies - the Return of the King - is a fine example of creativity loving constraints.
Movie making has very real constraints. During the production of The Return of the King, it became apparent that time was running out. Movie posters had been printed. Press releases released. The world was waiting on baited breath for exciting conclusion to the Lord of the Rings saga.
Instead of responding to the pressure by reducing scope, Peter added more. Right up till the very end new music was being added, new special effects were being shot, more CGI development occurred, everything was increasing in scope.
They pushed so hard those final days that when Peter went to see the grand opening of the movie in Wellington, he had yet to see the movie in its entirety from beginning to end in one sitting.
Return of the King went on to win 11 Academy awards that year and was hailed by critics and fans around the world as one of the greatest movies ever made. They not executed a very creative vision, but they were all the more creative in the execution in order to realize an otherwise unfilmable movie.
Give your self a constraint
So if you are spinning your wheels, and not making any progress on the creativity side, have someone impose a real constraint on you. You may find your creativity flourishes!
Agree? Disagree? Share your opinions, advice and stories.
October 11th, 2006 at 7:01 pm
The movie doesn’t have sound when I view it.
I agree constraints are mostly a good thing for creativity. I don’t think the movie is the best example, because these people had a budget one would hardly call constraining.
So let’s put some restraints and see if it spurs some creativity; Put a concept in the ideawarz of a website, but it has to be a website for people who have no personal computer and it can not have any color, only black and white, and it should be mouse only, no keyboard.
Good luck
October 11th, 2006 at 7:02 pm
“The movie doesn’t have sound when I view it.”
To be clear, I was writing about the video of Marissa, not the Lord of the Rings
October 12th, 2006 at 11:56 pm
Clip works fine for me.
I’ve always thought the sign of a true creative (vs. a wannabe) is that they’ll take any challenge or constraint and thrive BECAUSE of it not IN SPITE of it. Met a few creatives and lots of wannabes who say stuff like “standards?” I can’t work with those standards … I need to be creative. ha.
Most important part of this clip is the MORPH DON’T KILL ideas section. I posted to CH on this a couple of months ago. Every system needs to keep its “current failures” kicking around and they’ll often lead to great successes later on. It’s how genetics works, how nature/evolution works, etc.
Let’s keep that in mind.
October 13th, 2006 at 11:05 am
Just because a project has virtually unlimited money, doesn’t mean there are not constraints. I’m sure if they had an unlimited time to complete this movie, it may never had been completed.
October 13th, 2006 at 6:29 pm
Hey Julius,
I hear ya. How could a movie with this many people, and this much budget have any constraints. Yet yet Return of the King had HUGE constraints. Mostly around getting access to Peter Jackson time - which was a very precious commodity.
Did you know that before viewing the world wide launch in Wellington Peter never actually sat through and saw the entire movie from beginning to end. Their deadlines were so tight, that Peter was adding more special effects shots, more edits, more music, more re-shots right up until the last minute.
If he didn’t have these constraints, him and his team would never have produced the master piece it became.
I love constraints!
October 14th, 2006 at 10:58 am
Shazz, you are mischaracterizing Marissa’s message regarding “morph don’t kill”. She specifically says that it’s only valid for ideas in which a group of people have become excited enough about them to make them into full-blown Projects, and that when a group of people care enough about something there must be “something to it”. That is NOT equivalent to your belief that no idea should ever be deleted. In fact, she specifically says that some ideas should be killed. I suggest you listen again to that section of her presentation.
October 16th, 2006 at 11:00 pm
Hey Brandon,
Thanks for the feedback & I respect your POV. You certainly can’t waste significant cycles paying attention to ideas that don’t solve the problems or meet the opportunities on your doorstep. Too much opportunity cost.
However, what I was referring to is how long-term successful systems don’t rapidly toss out (what initially appear to be) bad ideas. They find a low-effort way of keeping them in the background (for quite a while) so that when situations change (many variations on the types of changes that can occur) these ideas can suddenly become part of a good solution. Portfolio theory does this, genetics does this, etc.
ON ANOTHER NOTE:
Redchurch has his own take on the power of creative constraints:
http://www.redchurch.com/quantum/category/creative-process/
April 26th, 2007 at 11:50 am
[…] Babies and young kids thrive when they have a routine. They feel more comfortable and safer knowing what to expect and when. A regular routine or schedule helps kids develop and succeed. Creativity loves constraints, after all. […]