HOW CONSTRAINTS DRIVE INNOVATION

In my workshop with the College of Charleston School of Business MBA students last week, one exercise I led them through was rooted in the concept: “Resourcefulness over resources.”


CONSTRAINTS
The constraint I gave them was,

“How can you get a job upon graduation, if you do not have your smart phone or a computer? No internet access. All you have is an old flip phone that can only dial numbers.”

Step one: Solo brainstorm. Ask: “What if…” and “How might…”
Step two: Cohort huddle. Build on ideas as a team.
Step three: Cohorts present their top 2-3 solutions.

It’s wonderful to see the lightbulbs going off. “Networking at meet-ups.” “Walking into corporate offices.” “Attending association conferences”…

This is what constraints do - they unlock resourceful thinking.


THE RESEARCH
New Research from a  2025 working paper from Harvard Business School, https://bit.ly/3UWmlk2, suggests that too many resources can actually suffocate innovation.

Resource constraints force teams to be more creative, which in turn leads to more unconventional thinking and new breakthroughs.

Researchers Harsh Ketkar and Maria Roche explored the relationship between resources and innovation in their study of 11,853 companies. Their findings suggest that certain constraints can drive more unconventional and diverse outcomes.

Here's what they discovered:
Scarcity Breeds Ingenuity: Companies that operated with significant constraints early on were more likely to take creative and unconventional approaches to build their products and services.
Abundant Resources Breed Convention: Teams that received a large initial budget or a windfall of resources tended to be less creative and more conventional in their methods after the resources were received.

Why? Tight budgets = more ' bricolage' a French term meaning "tinkering to make do with what you have."

Constraints spark more experimentation, pushing people and teams to combine available tools in new ways, get scrappy, and be more resourceful.


IF A CROW CAN DO IT
Did you know the phrase “necessity is the mother of invention” came from a crow?

Well, sort of.

In Aesop’s fable “The Crow and the Pitcher” (~6th century BCE), a thirsty crow drops pebbles into a pitcher to raise the water level so it can drink.

The moral stated: “Necessity is the mother of invention.”

—

Whether your constraint is a lack of resources, the need to get water from a jar, or finding a job without the internet — use that constraint as your creative catalyst. Make it the foundation of your creative brief.

Start by asking, “How might…” and “What if…”

Ready to get scrappy?

To your resourceful success,

-Barry