Freedom or Fences? Fostering Innovative Thinking
There is one school of thought about innovating that subscribes to the notion that creativity comes from wide open spaces. Give your think-out-of-the-box team plenty of resources and don’t limit them to thinking only within the real-world limitations that every company has, and their brains will spark magnificently.
There is another school of thought, one that has proven true many times. Call it the “Mother of Invention” school, and it says that necessity is what sparks innovation. I’ll go one further than that: Constraints foster rather than inhibit innovative solutions.
Consider these two scenarios:
- Give a team a completely blank whiteboard and tell them to solve a problem creatively. They will spin their wheels for a while as they work on creating some sort of starting point.
- Give that same team the same whiteboard, but with a list of available resources, a budget, and timeline, and they will dive into thinking about solutions.
Constraints provide a structure or an anchor that helps frame the problem and test solutions against. The scenario 1 team has no structure or anchor, and they must spend time creating one of their own which may or may not suit the problem they need to solve. The scenario 2 team may view the exercise as a jigsaw-puzzle-solving mission. The constraints form the frame of the puzzle, defining boundaries so that the puzzle can be solved effectively.
Research has shown that the presence of constraints can actually trigger creative thinking rather than shut it down. Some constraints work better than others to foster innovative thinking. Of these, there are three that are important for solution creation in the oil and gas space.
Domain constraints require that the members of the team doing the creative thinking have domain experience and understand the space in which the problem resides.
Variability constraints specify how much a solution can differ from current state. Regulatory considerations and the characteristics of the available talent pool are examples of boundaries within which solutions must be creative.
Cognitive constraints can be inhibitors. These are limitations in the thinking of management and/or the team members tasked with innovative problem solving. One well-recognized cognitive restraint in the industry is the “not invented here” mindset which prevents thinking from outside the company or department from making a positive impact on innovation.
Creativity strives in a space with constraints. Next time your innovative thinkers assemble to take on a knotty problem, make sure their white board has some content. In particular, make sure it offers the boundaries for the puzzle they need to solve in the form of relevant constraints.
Let me know if we can be of any help in the innovation process.
Jim Lawnin, Managing Partner
jlawnin@bblventures.com
