Seth Godin’s post on Real Creativity resounded with me, because it debunks off-the-cuff comments like “it would be cool if [outlandish idea]” or “why don’t you [outlandish idea]?” as business ideas. (It’s okay to dream — I’m just saying that undeveloped dreams don’t make good business ideas.)
His summary is that “real business creativity comes from boundaries.” 37signals has been advocating the virtues of constraints for a long time. Seth is saying that dreaming up something so outlandish that it can’t be implemented isn’t creative.
I disliked the movie Van Helsing because it seemed that all the characters could fly, shoot laser beams, and come back from the dead. The lack of constraints was frustrating.
Figuring out a better way to do your job (intrapreneurship), on the other hand, IS a form of creativity.
I think one of the real challenges is figuring out what the constraints are. Now days we have access to server farms running killer apps that have been opened to the public by Yahoo, Google, Alexa, etc.
Open Source is also shifting the constraint boundaries, as virtual communities are coming together to build free software that is empowering the world with greater tools and resources.
Given all of that, we still do have constraints. As we figure out what our current constraints are, we will be able realize killer ideas.