By: Michael Kanazawa

Sometimes the greatest and most expansive innovations come through projects with the greatest constraints. For some, there is a belief that brainstorming on breakthrough innovations must be done without boundaries. However, these exercises often result in unconstrained outputs that are scattered, unfocused, and impractical.

In contrast, putting significant constraints on an outcome forces more structured thinking and often a need for breakthrough ideas to achieve the results despite the constraints. This month Raj Setty shares in his ChangeThis manifesto a form called “mini sagas” as a way to force yourself to think more clearly. He challenges us to write a full story in exactly 50 words. It’s tough and it takes a creative mind to tell a full story that in that few words and in an exact number of words. Mainly these are fun examples of creative writing, but there is a very practical application to setting growth strategies and running effective strategic brainstorming work.

In developing corporate strategies we are often asked if a strategic planning session should be unconstrained or operate within boundaries. We typically have the team set boundaries that represent the realities of the market and company position. And if there are tight financial constraints, those should be a part of the equation as well. The designers at Nintendo were challenged to create a video game platform that “mothers would love” and came up with the Wii. Iwata Soturu, President and CEO of Nintendo, remembers talking about the console design with his engineers and stacking up about three DVD cases and saying, “I want something about this big.” How about adding the constraints of a price point lower than previous generations, ability to play all games ever produced by Nintendo, 24/7 always-on capability, and something mothers would love to have in the home? In designing the Wii, Nintendo was clear on the target market and vision for the product, with tight parameters. Other than that, creativity was left wide open. The results was much more innovation to achieve the vision than if the team just simply followed the traditional game console roadmap for ever increasing graphics capabilities and processing power.

Next time you have the challenge of sparking your team to generate innovations, think about how to structure the brainstorming work to be more focused and productive. You may find that by adding constraints you actually generate bigger breakthroughs that are necessary to design around what may at first feel like impossible constraints.

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