Creativity and Constraints: Exploring the Role of Constraints in the Creative Processes of Research and Development Teams

Abstract

Research on creativity in organizations has revealed a variety of important paradoxes that seem fundamental to the nature of creativity itself. One such paradox is the tension between freedom and constraint in the creative process. Where some theorists have described the ideal creative process as unstructured, open-ended, and free of external limitations, others have found that creative individuals and teams can benefit from constraints. The purpose of this study is to make sense of this tension in the literature by investigating the ways in which constraints both inhibit and enhance work team creativity. Based on inductive field research with four research and development teams in a multinational corporation known for innovation, this study addresses the research questions: (a) What are the key constraints experienced by R&D teams and what impact do these have on team creativity?, and (b) Under what conditions do constraints inhibit or enhance R&D team creativity? This research uncovered a variety of salient constraints that can be organized into two broad categories: process constraints and product constraints. While process and product constraints were found to have differential impacts on team creativity, this study also revealed that under different circumstances, these constraints affected team creativity differently. Specifically, enduring team dynamics patterns, characterized as enabling dynamics and disabling dynamics, played a vital role in how teams interpreted and responded to constraints, and therefore whether constraints inhibited or enhanced team creativity. Teams experiencing the right kinds of constraints in the right environments, and which saw opportunity in constraints, benefitted creatively from them. The results of this research challenge the assumption that constraints kill creativity, demonstrating instead that for teams able to accept and embrace them, there is freedom in constraint.