Creativity from Constraints
Posted on Wed, Sep 09, 2009
Today Nathalie Molina talks about constraints...
The subject of constraints has popped up a lot lately: From my daily work meetings, and a business plan for an interesting non-profit idea that a friend is cooking up, to the twittersphere and beyond. While the concept of constraints being the seed of creativity is well known in the art world, I get the feeling that we've experienced too much abundance in the business world to really remember what it means to translate that idea into the arena of commerce. With budgets being cut, and losing some of my customer contacts to a recent round of layoffs, I'm increasingly reminded of my more Spartan college days. While I remember never really feeling like I was doing without, I am nonetheless baffled now to grasp how I survived on so little. I remember how I finagled my way into getting the owner of a car dealership to let me pay for half of my new Jeep by building them a web site (weren't the 90's fun?), or how I got a fabulous sushi chef to regularly feed me great Toro in exchange for six packs of mediocre beer, and how I always found a way to come up with cash for trips, adventures or whatever emergency shopping the next social event required. I remember having a lot of close calls, but in the end, somehow things always worked out.
My thought?
More and more of us are going to have to tap into those scrappy selves, and if you never experienced it, you'll likely have to learn. You'll have to learn what to do when your marketing budget is slashed (try getting a comp'd flight to Vegas and borrowing a buddy's conference pass to meet a client and catch the Al Gore talk! True story!), when 20% of your team gets cut or when that 401k contribution plan gets shut down. I wonder if the creativity to inspire and make things that are artful and inspiring, can also translate into creativity and scrappiness to make lemonade out of the little tiny lemons we're all being asked to squeeze these days? My sense is the answer is yes, and it'll be a beautiful thing to watch, as well all tap into that scrappy ‘make-due' mentality that once served us so well, and kept things so simple, back in the days before twitter and under-water mortgages.