Two neighbourhood bakeries open in the same month. The first has generous backing and spends heavily on its launch: a professional photo shoot, paid social media ads, a smart website and printed flyers for every letterbox in the area. The second has R5,000 for marketing and not a cent more.
The second owner has to think differently. She leaves a free loaf with the receptionist at every office block within walking distance, with a handwritten card inviting staff to come and try the rest. She starts a WhatsApp group for regulars who want to know when the cinnamon buns come out of the oven. She asks the local primary school if the children would like to decorate biscuits for their school fair.
Six months later, it’s the second bakery with the queue out of the door.
This isn’t a guarantee that less money always produces better ideas. But it reflects something researchers have found across many fields: within limits, constraints can push people towards more creative solutions than abundant resources do.
One Like insight: When you can’t solve a problem with money, you’re forced to solve it with imagination.
What the research says
In 2019, Oguz Acar of City, University of London, Murat Tarakci of Rotterdam School of Management and Daan van Knippenberg of Drexel University published a review in the Journal of Management that pulled together research on constraints and creativity from management, entrepreneurship, marketing, psychology and other fields. They looked at 145 studies covering three broad kinds of constraint: limits on inputs such as money, time and materials; rules about the process, such as regulations or required methods; and requirements about the output, such as a fixed format or a specific goal.
The overall picture was more positive than conventional wisdom suggests. The review found that a moderate degree of constraint often helped innovation rather than hindering it. A shortage of resources can increase the motivation to find a clever way round a problem. Abundant resources, by contrast, can lead to what the researchers described as cognitive fixation: people reach for the obvious, expensive solution because they can afford to, rather than looking for a better one.
The key words are “within limits”. The relationship appears to follow an inverted U. Too few constraints and people drift towards familiar solutions. A moderate level of constraint sharpens thinking. Too many, and people become discouraged or simply can’t act. A bakery with R5,000 can be inventive. A bakery with R50 may just struggle.
Setting useful constraints on purpose
Most small businesses already live with plenty of constraints they didn’t choose: limited cash, a small team, too few hours. The research suggests a different way to look at some of them. Instead of treating every limitation as an obstacle, you can sometimes use a deliberate constraint to sharpen a team’s thinking.
A few kinds of constraint tend to be useful:
- A budget cap. “How could we launch this new service for under R2,000?” forces different ideas than an open budget.
- A time limit. “What could we test by Friday?” favours simple, practical experiments over elaborate plans.
- A format rule. “Explain our offer in one sentence” or “Design the flyer using only our two brand colours” can produce clearer, bolder work.
- A “no” rule. “Find new customers without paid advertising” pushes the team towards partnerships, referrals and community ideas.
The trick is to keep the constraint challenging but achievable, and to make clear it’s a creative exercise rather than a punishment. As we saw in Why Good Ideas Die in Small Businesses, extreme time pressure can suppress creative thinking, so a sensible deadline is very different from a frantic one.
[Infographic placement] The creativity curve. An inverted U. Left side, labelled Too few constraints: “We’ll just pay for ads.” Peak, labelled Useful constraints: “How could we reach 500 local people for under R2,000?” Right side, labelled Too many constraints: “Do it for free, by tomorrow, alone.” Caption: Acar, Tarakci and van Knippenberg (2019), review of 145 studies.
Putting constraints to work
Next time your business faces a problem where the instinct is to spend your way out, try a short exercise first. Set a deliberately tight but realistic constraint, such as a small budget, a short deadline or a ban on the obvious solution, and give yourself or the team twenty minutes to come up with as many ideas as possible within it. You can always fall back on the expensive option. Often, you won’t need to.
It’s also worth looking at constraints you already live with and asking whether they could become strengths. A small team can respond faster than a large one. A modest budget can make a business more personal and more creative in its marketing. A single location can become the heart of a community.
A few questions can help:
- Where are we reaching for the expensive, obvious solution out of habit?
- What could we achieve on this problem with half the budget or half the time?
- Which of our existing limitations could we turn into a distinctive strength?
- Are our constraints challenging, or so tight they’re simply demoralising?
Which brings us back to the two bakeries. The well-funded one bought attention. The one with R5,000 had to earn it, and in the process built relationships that no advertising budget could buy. Constraint didn’t guarantee her success. But it did push her towards ideas that money might have made it too easy to skip.
Sources
- Oguz A. Acar, Murat Tarakci and Daan van Knippenberg, “Creativity and Innovation Under Constraints: A Cross-Disciplinary Integrative Review”, Journal of Management 45(1), 2019 (open-access version). Summary by IEDP.
