Earlier this year, I wrote on thinking strategically then filling in the boxes.  Successful innovations start this way.

Mark McGuinness reminded me of this as I played one of his his mind games for thinking inside the box tonight here on my holiday in NZ.

He uses creative constraints like time,  money and understanding market realities to generate better and faster innovations.  But he reminds us to forget about the restrictions of red tape and any fears you may have. Most of all he points out that understanding your customers and what they do is key! Erm… I agree!

I always remember when I was in a meeting with a big bank and the creatives were being drilled on the benefits of accessibility with the website they had just built. I heard cries of "you’re stemming our creativity" and "that’s so boring" but if they had been given their creative constraints up front, or better still, created them themselves, then there would have been no argument.