As a person who started out as an engineer, I know that most engineers like to solve problems that are useful to society. Often this means that there are tradeoffs and constraints associated with any problem. Cars that get higher gas mileage may need to be lighter, but lighter cars don't survive crashes as well as heavy cars. So when we are presented a problem to solve or an opportunity to address, we often start out by trying to define the constraints.
These constraints could be based on technology issues, but are often based on other factors, like legal or regulatory issues, pricing or cost issues, distribution or transportation issues and so forth. When we as innovators agree to work within a set of bounds or constraints to solve problems, we are like the kids in kindergarten who are encouraged to "color within the lines" - that is, we accept the constraints and our thinking is guided by nudging right up next to the constraint, but never violating or ignoring the constraint. In this manner the constraint conforms our thinking and becomes a barrier. We don't challenge the constraint but accept it, and that governs the outcome. Since every other firm in the same space or industry is challenged with the same constraints, most of the solutions look very similar. We've become prisoners of our own thinking, happily limited in our degrees of freedom by constraints we've accepted.
To read the full, original article click on this link: Innovate on Purpose: Innovation is solving problems without constraints
Author: Jeffrey Phillips
