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Creativity Loves Constraints

Marissa Ann Mayer

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Mihai Iacob
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309 views2 pages

Creativity Loves Constraints

Marissa Ann Mayer

Uploaded by

Mihai Iacob
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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IdeasOutside Shot

BY MARISSA ANN MAYER

Creativity Loves Constraints


When people think about creativity, they think about artistic workunbridled, unguided effort that leads to beautiful effect. But if you look deeper, you'll find that some ofthe most inspiring art forms, such as haikus, sonatas, and religious paintings, are fraught with constraints. They are beautiful because creativity triumphed over the "rules." Constraints
shape and focus problems and provide clear challenges to overcome. Creativity thrives best when constrained. But constraints must be balanced with a healthy disregard for the impossible. Too many curbs can lead to pessimism and despair. Disregarding the bounds of what we know or accept gives rise to ideas that are non-obvious, unconventional, or unexplored. The creativity realized in this balance between constraint and disregard for the impossible is ieled by passion and leads to revolutionary change. A few years ago, I met Paul Beckett, a talented designer who makes sculptural clocks. When I asked him why not do just sculptures, Paul said he liked the challenge of making something artistically beautiful that also had to perform as a clock. Framing the task in that way freed his creative force. Paul reflected that he also foimd it easier to paint on a canvas that had a mark on it rather than starting with one that was entirely clean and white. This resonated vidth me. It is often easier to direct your energy when you start with constrained challenges (a sculpture that must be a clock) or constrained possibilities (a canvas that is marked). As vice-president for search products and user experience at Google, I lead a team whose job is to harness and meld the creative forces of engineers and to channel that creativity into making something that people can use. In product development, we see many different types of constraints. Sometimes they can be the conditions by which the problem must be solved. At Google, the products and services we deliver have to work well for all kinds of users. Consider, for example, our recent release ofthe new Google Toolbar beta. When we develop a toolbar version, we can't contemplate only what functions would be useful or which features users ask for most. We also must think about how to create a toolbar that works for all users regardless of whether their screen resolutions allow for five buttons across or 35. We need to make sure that it is fast to download, even over a modem. The new Toolbar has a lot of novel functions, but it is also restricted in download size to just 625 kilobytes, and it allows users to customize how
102 I BusinessWeek I February 13, 2006

...but they must be balanced with a healthy disregard for the impossible

many and which buttons they want to include. Constraints can actually speed development. For instance, we often can get a sense ofjust how good a new concept is if we oty prototype for a single day or week. Or we'll keep team size to three people or fewer. By limiting how long we work on something or how many people work on it, we limit our investment. In the case ofthe Toolbar beta, several key feattures (custom buttons, shared bookmarks) were tried out in under a week. In fact, during the brainstorming phase, we came up with aboutfivetimes as many "key features." Most were discarded after a week of prototyping. Since only 1 in every 5 to 10 ideas works out, the strategy of limiting the time we have to prove that an idea works allows us to try out more ideas, increasing our odds of success. Speed also lets you fan faster. Have you ever wondered how a product so lame got to market, a movie so bad got released, or a government policy so misguided got passed? In cases like these, ifs likely that the people working on the project invested so much time that it was too painful to walk away. They often know that the endeavor is misguided, yet they work tul the painful, unsuccessful end. Thafs why ifs important to discover failure fast and abandon it quickly. A limited investment makes it easier to move on to something else that has a better chance of success. Yet constraints alone can stifle and kill creativity. Whue we need them to spur passion and insight, we also need a sense of hopefulness to keep us engaged and unwavering in our search for the right idea. Innovation is bom from the interaction between constraint and vision. Henry Ford once said: "If I'd hstened to customers, I'd have given them a faster horse." True creativity makes the impossible possible. It can revolutionize a product, a business, the economy, and the world around us.
MarissaAnnMccyer is vice-presidentfor search products and user experience at Google. She holds cm MS in computer scienceJrom Stanford University andjoined Google in 1999.

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