I've never had fewer constraints placed on my thinking than now, having recently had our R&D group shuttered after our company was purchased. Typically a client or leadership would pose a challenge for me and a team of coworkers to solve. Even as a strategist, where I was tasked with reinventing the business, there were constraints involving core competencies of the firm that required consideration. This realization dawned on me while driving home from a networking meeting last week. I was considering starting my own business. Now that I was "in transition", It could be any industry, a product or a service, with the only constraints being my own imagination. Not even my own abilities could really be considered constraints, as I had been speaking with potential partners with skills different than mine, which could become an added capability. All I/we needed was the problem to solve. Determining that problem is the key to unlocking the box.
Returning to my original statement of never having fewer constraints placed on my thinking than now - it has become very apparent how important creating constraints is to developing innovation. It is important to clarify a distinction between creating art and creating innovation. Art is more unbounded and not constrained by the need to provide value at a reasonable price.. Innovation is more constrained, as it is creating value that user are willing to pay for, to solve a need. In school we called it Problem Framing, which seems opposed to what some refer to as thinking out of the box. Problem Framing starts with understanding the box you're in, and want to exceed. A better phrase would probably be, "thinking into a new box". The new box being a new set of constraints or context, where your existing competencies apply in novel ways. Simply thinking outside of your current box, with no box to simplify your challenge, may not be as helpful as you would think.
Returning to my original statement of never having fewer constraints placed on my thinking than now - it has become very apparent how important creating constraints is to developing innovation. It is important to clarify a distinction between creating art and creating innovation. Art is more unbounded and not constrained by the need to provide value at a reasonable price.. Innovation is more constrained, as it is creating value that user are willing to pay for, to solve a need. In school we called it Problem Framing, which seems opposed to what some refer to as thinking out of the box. Problem Framing starts with understanding the box you're in, and want to exceed. A better phrase would probably be, "thinking into a new box". The new box being a new set of constraints or context, where your existing competencies apply in novel ways. Simply thinking outside of your current box, with no box to simplify your challenge, may not be as helpful as you would think.