Creativity - Let's put her back in the box

So I was watching Top Chef...

Clichés can be horrible things, they can really fix perceptions and force people to overlook the obvious.

I was watching Top Chef, because I like to cook and competition is fun when it involves knives. In this episode one competitor was given access to ingredients early and could choose anything he wanted. To his competitor's frustration, any ingredients he chose were then strictly off limits. The challenge was surf and turf and this chef chose lobster and Filet Mignon - truly earth shattering.  

Then it hit me...

The chefs that were given limitations, however minimal, had much deeper conviction in their choice of proteins. The first chef went pacing up and down the large industrial size refrigerator and could not make up his mind on what to choose.

He even commented that "the ingredients were not speaking to him" and that he basically could not find inspiration. Creativity was not coming to him. Instead it hit his competitors like bolts of lightening. Frogs and Muscles. Belly of Pork and Scallops. Suckling Pig and Shrimp. Pork and Eel.  

Put creativity in a box...

Let's be honest boxes can be cute. Creativity is all about working within them. Creativity has nothing to do with leaving the box, that would be cheating. Innovation is about answering the questions - what can I do with the tools I'm given? How can I use these resources more effectively?

Raw material is limited, solutions are unlimited. Don't work outside the box, just rearrange the inside by giving yourself limitations to guide inspiration. 

Provide yourself artificial limitations...

I would argue that companies, for example, that have smaller marketing budgets have to be more creative and can dream up much more inventive ways to achieve results with less. This means you have to give yourself reasonable limitations to really come up with creative results. Once you make decisions on how you will be limiting yourself, you have effectively limited down the infinite possibilities and allowed yourself to simplify and focus on only those that apply. You can develop a strategically innovative mind by knowing when to limit yourself, hold yourself back in ways that frustrates you. Frustration and need is the mother of all inventions, they do say.

Here is a great TED talk the incapsulates everything very perfectly. Making art within limitation, makes for new never-before-seen results. Embrace the limitations!