 "<b>Book extract:</b> Constraints aid creativity")
THE MYTHS OF CREATIVITY: THE TRUTH ABOUT HOW INNOVATIVE COMPANIES AND PEOPLE GENERATE GREAT IDEAS
Author: David Burkus
Publisher: Wiley
ISBN: 9788126555352
Price: Rs 499
The creativity-boosting power of constraints doesn't just come from the fact that they provide a structure to work within. In turns out that when our minds encounter constraints, we're better able to tap into our creative potential. Psychology researchers at the University of Amsterdam recently showed that people open their minds to more creative ideas and better connect unrelated thoughts after they encounter constraints. The researchers divided participants into two groups. The participants in both groups began first by playing a computer game that challenged them to escape from a maze on the screen. One of the groups, however, played a modified version of the maze that severely limited participants' options and made escape a much harder endeavor. Their game was significantly constrained by the lack of options. After the maze game, both groups of participants were given a standard creativity assessment consisting of several puzzles designed to test their ability to draw connections among seemingly unrelated thoughts. The participants who tried to escape the more difficult maze ended up solving 40 percent more puzzles than the group that played with a simpler maze. The researchers concluded that the constraints in the harder maze also triggered a response in the participants' minds, which heightened their imaginative abilities. What these researchers have discovered about the creativity-enhancing power of facing constraints, some companies have already known and implemented. One such company, 37signals, goes beyond tolerating constraints for the sake of greater creativity. It creates them.
With Jason Fried at the helm, 37signals was founded in 1999 as a website design firm that specialised in creating websites for businesses. From nearly the beginning, the group utilized an alternative billing approach that forced them to work within constraints. Many website developers at the time billed by the hour or bid on large-scale, long-term products with high price tags. Instead, Fried's group billed $3,500 per Web page built and offered to complete the page inside of one week. If the client wanted to add another page, the price was another $3,500 and another week. Adopting this format forced Fried's team to work efficiently inside the constraints of time and medium - they had only one page, one week, and $3,500 in labor costs with which to develop their product. The offering took off. In addition to developing creative Web pages, 37signals' constrained pricing allowed companies to minimise the risk they took on a Web developer. Businesses liked that they could bet a small amount on 37signals and that if it didn't work out, they could look elsewhere. Most of the time, though, it worked out better than expected.
In 2003, the 37signals business model began to change dramatically. It was then that Fried first hired David Heine-meier Hansson as a contractor to develop a project management system for 37signals to use internally. The program worked so well for the company's purposes that it decided to release it as a commercial product. In 2004, Basecamp, the company's flagship project management tool, was launched. By 2012, Basecamp was being used by millions of people to manage over eight million projects, 16 from Fortune 500 companies' product launches to presidential campaigns. "When we were building Basecamp," Fried and Hansson write, "we had plenty of limitations. We had a design firm to run with existing client work, a seven-hour time difference between principals (David was doing the programming in Denmark, the rest of us were in the States), a small team, and no outside funding." Fried and Hansson believed that these constraints didn't really limit their capability. Instead, they helped them create a beautiful product because "these constraints forced us to keep the product simple."
Although it was initially just a response to the constraint of resources, the simplicity of their Basecamp product became a self-imposed domain constraint for 3 7signals. Basecamp was such a usable product because it was so simple. The developers didn't have the resources to build a feature-laden product, so they didn't. What they found was that users didn't want all those features; they wanted something that was simple to work with. Any new iteration of Basecamp, or any 3 7signals product, has to stay simple to use.
It currently offers four core products: Highrise (a customer relationship management tool), Campfire (a real-time group chat room for business collaboration), Backpack (an information manager and intranet), and Basecamp. Each of these products is simple, effective, and devoid of the 'feature creep' of most software tools.
Excerpted with permission from Wiley India
Author: David Burkus
Publisher: Wiley
ISBN: 9788126555352
Price: Rs 499
The creativity-boosting power of constraints doesn't just come from the fact that they provide a structure to work within. In turns out that when our minds encounter constraints, we're better able to tap into our creative potential. Psychology researchers at the University of Amsterdam recently showed that people open their minds to more creative ideas and better connect unrelated thoughts after they encounter constraints. The researchers divided participants into two groups. The participants in both groups began first by playing a computer game that challenged them to escape from a maze on the screen. One of the groups, however, played a modified version of the maze that severely limited participants' options and made escape a much harder endeavor. Their game was significantly constrained by the lack of options. After the maze game, both groups of participants were given a standard creativity assessment consisting of several puzzles designed to test their ability to draw connections among seemingly unrelated thoughts. The participants who tried to escape the more difficult maze ended up solving 40 percent more puzzles than the group that played with a simpler maze. The researchers concluded that the constraints in the harder maze also triggered a response in the participants' minds, which heightened their imaginative abilities. What these researchers have discovered about the creativity-enhancing power of facing constraints, some companies have already known and implemented. One such company, 37signals, goes beyond tolerating constraints for the sake of greater creativity. It creates them.
With Jason Fried at the helm, 37signals was founded in 1999 as a website design firm that specialised in creating websites for businesses. From nearly the beginning, the group utilized an alternative billing approach that forced them to work within constraints. Many website developers at the time billed by the hour or bid on large-scale, long-term products with high price tags. Instead, Fried's group billed $3,500 per Web page built and offered to complete the page inside of one week. If the client wanted to add another page, the price was another $3,500 and another week. Adopting this format forced Fried's team to work efficiently inside the constraints of time and medium - they had only one page, one week, and $3,500 in labor costs with which to develop their product. The offering took off. In addition to developing creative Web pages, 37signals' constrained pricing allowed companies to minimise the risk they took on a Web developer. Businesses liked that they could bet a small amount on 37signals and that if it didn't work out, they could look elsewhere. Most of the time, though, it worked out better than expected.
In 2003, the 37signals business model began to change dramatically. It was then that Fried first hired David Heine-meier Hansson as a contractor to develop a project management system for 37signals to use internally. The program worked so well for the company's purposes that it decided to release it as a commercial product. In 2004, Basecamp, the company's flagship project management tool, was launched. By 2012, Basecamp was being used by millions of people to manage over eight million projects, 16 from Fortune 500 companies' product launches to presidential campaigns. "When we were building Basecamp," Fried and Hansson write, "we had plenty of limitations. We had a design firm to run with existing client work, a seven-hour time difference between principals (David was doing the programming in Denmark, the rest of us were in the States), a small team, and no outside funding." Fried and Hansson believed that these constraints didn't really limit their capability. Instead, they helped them create a beautiful product because "these constraints forced us to keep the product simple."
Although it was initially just a response to the constraint of resources, the simplicity of their Basecamp product became a self-imposed domain constraint for 3 7signals. Basecamp was such a usable product because it was so simple. The developers didn't have the resources to build a feature-laden product, so they didn't. What they found was that users didn't want all those features; they wanted something that was simple to work with. Any new iteration of Basecamp, or any 3 7signals product, has to stay simple to use.
It currently offers four core products: Highrise (a customer relationship management tool), Campfire (a real-time group chat room for business collaboration), Backpack (an information manager and intranet), and Basecamp. Each of these products is simple, effective, and devoid of the 'feature creep' of most software tools.
Excerpted with permission from Wiley India