Constraints driven Innovation
Innovation: Innovation because of constraints and not despite them

20 million* premature and low birth weight babies are born every year. Many of them in developing countries don’t survive because of neonatal hypothermia and a lack of access to incubators. These large infant warmers (below) are expensive and inaccessible to many hospitals that couldn’t afford incubators or a continuous supply of electricity for them.
in 2017, a team at Stanford was given a design challenge to develop a new solution that would cost less than 1% of original incubators. They also had to design something that won’t be limited by the lack of access to electricity and other infrastructure, had to be transportable, easy to use, easy to clean, inexpensive, and something that local citizens would embrace. These were the constraints within which they had to design.
🚀 Instead of giving up because of these constraints, they embraced them. Such challenges can be demotivating. But if embraced, teams can build radically innovative solutions. After spending time in Nepal, the team of Stanford students did exactly that. They developed “Embrace” - a radically different solution from the large hospital incubators.
Embrace is an example to show how constraints are not always bad. They unlock innovation that might not have been possible otherwise. Without the constraints, the team might have designed a smaller or more efficient incubator but nothing as radical as this Embrace incubator.
Many teams think that constraints are bad and limit their creativity. They might assume that unlimited resources might be great. But what they don’t realize is that constraints unlock creativity. Of course, not all constraints unlock creativity. Balanced constraints are.
A well-framed challenge has just enough constraints, with space to explore.
In “A Beautiful Constraint”, Adam Morgan and Mark Braden of EatBigFish share how to channel constraints to link a Bold Ambition with a Significant Constraint to create a ‘Propelling Question’.
“A propelling question is one that has both a bold ambition and a significant constraint linked together. It is called a propelling question because the presence of those two elements together in the same question does not allow it to be answered in the same way we have answered previous questions”- Adam Morgan & Mark Barden
There are a few question methodologies that one can use - 5 Whys, How Might We, etc., When we apply the concept of a propelling question, we can come up with completely new solutions. To do so, it is important to identify the constraints you face, define unachievable ambition and ask yourself propelling questions.
What kind of constraints might we face?
🔷 Foundation - A constraint of something that is foundational. For ex, access to a brick-and-mortar store to serve food or retail space for products that need trying
🔷 Resource: Limitation of resources of budget, people, knowledge, or expertise
🔷 Time: The most common constraint is that of time. It is never enough!
🔷 Method: A constraint that things have to be done a certain way.
How bold can your ambitions be? Types of Ambitions
🔷 Growth: Growth in terms of revenue/profit, number of customers, etc.,
🔷 Impact: Ambition of purpose or mission to have an impact on the world
🔷 Quality: Hopes to deliver a certain quality
“The discomfort of propelling questions makes us think differently; they break path dependence and propel us toward new solutions”
How can Propelling questions help rethink solutions?
❓ When Audi wanted to compete in the Le Mans race in 2006, instead of asking the question “How can we build a faster car”, they asked a more progressive question of “How could we win Le Mans if our car could go no faster then anyone else’s?”
🔥 This resulted in putting diesel technology in their race cards. This meant they could take fewer pit stops and save time. This helped them win the race even though their car was not faster than others
❓ “How do we build a well-designed, durable table for five euros?
🔥 Ikea’s low-cost, build-it-yourself furniture is the result of this propelling question
⚡️ Mindsets: When faced with a constraint you could have different mindsets
Victims: Those who lower their goals and expectation when faced with a constraint
Neutralizers: Those who don’t lower their goal but finds alternate ways to meet them
Transformers: Those who find a way to use the constraint as a propelling opportunity
While people can move between different mindsets, when you have a transformer mindset is when you can unleash radical innovation by asking propelling questions that make constraints beautiful. Victims will give up on their ambition to fit into the constraint. Transformers will continue to be ambitious but will use the constraints to propel their search for solutions. Great transformers will also impose self-constraints to unlock innovation.
So next time you experience constraints or limitations, look for ways to leverage them to meet your ambitions.
*Stats from 2017
Credits- A Beautiful Question and Embrace
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