The Balancing Act: An Empirical Study Introducing and Removing Constraints in Idea Generation
Abstract
To stay competitive in today’s economy, organizational leaders are making creativity and innovation a key business priority. As such, organizations have become particularly interested in how to become more innovative while managing obstacles or constraints. The relationship between constraints and creativity in the literature provides two avenues of thought. Traditionally, constraints are thought to inhibit creativity. However, an emerging line of work suggests that constraints may in fact facilitate creativity. To address the debate around the role of constraints in creative efforts, the present effort examined how adjusting “constraindness” during idea generation influenced creativity. To test this, participants were asked to design a marketing campaign for a NCAA Division One football program and were presented with constraints at multiple time points during the design process. Results suggested that the introduction of constraints early on during the idea generation phase may be beneficial to creative endeavors, while also finding that being overly constrained may hinder creative performance. This work adds to a growing body of literature regarding the constraint-creativity relationship and provides insight to practitioners regarding how constraints may be managed for optimal creative performance.