Constraints Make it Easier to be Innovative

Think about it. It may be counter-intuitive, but putting constraints on a problem can actually help us create innovative new concepts. I believe that it was Stephen Sondheim who said something like, " If you ask me to write a song about anything, I would have a hard time getting started. But if you ask me to write a song about a cowboy whose girl just left him, his dog died and his red pickup truck broke down, I could do that."

The same thing applies when we ask students to think of an idea for a new product. We can make it easier for our students and everyone, if we put constraints on the assignment. For example here are constraints that we gave the students recently when we asked them to design a new product-

• Must be human powered and work without electricity
• Must be affordable by people who live on $2.00 per day
• Must address an important need in people's lives, not just a want.
• Must be sustainable.

Note- If the design meets these constraints, then everyone in the world could use the product.

Terry Teachout wrote about the importance of constraints when trying to creat unique works, in the Wall Street Journal on October 28, 2006, A Challenge to Martin Scorsese

... all great art is ruthlessly selective. It imposes order on the natural world. That's why sonnets have 14 lines and string quartets are played by four musicians. An art without rules is nothing more than a willful, inchoate stew of random impulses. As Igor Stravinsky put it: "Whatever diminishes constraint diminishes strength. The more constraints one imposes, the more one frees one's self of the chains that shackle the spirit."

Try imposing meaningful constraints at the start of your next attempt to achieve an innovative new design.