Just as necessity is the mother of invention, constraint may well be the godmother of creativity. Forget sheer artistic prowess, but give only a pair of scissors and a sheet of paper to a class of third-graders and creativity will go through the roof.

It’s often by applying a strict system of rules — so strict, in fact, that ‘business as usual’ is no longer an option — that you force people to step out of their comfort zone and to find new ways of expressing themselves. Like young rising star Montreal chef John Mike said at a recent CreativeMornings event: Sometimes I need a box to think out of it.

The expression has been more used than the Led Zeppelin records in my uncle’s basement, I know. But take a look at Hydro-Québec’s research institure, IREQ, and the way they have grown around the edges of the classical stage-gate process to better take advantage of fuzzy front-end potentialities. They have also punched holes through their boxes, to let ideas filter — open-innovation-funnel style —  in and out of an ideas reservoir.

PechaKuchas are another great example. Ask any seasoned manager, speaker or academic to reformat their talk in the ‘20 slides x 20 seconds’ straightjacked and you’ll see cold sweats dripping from their chin. The result may not always be the mindblowing presentation you would expect from a TED speaker, but the exercise itself will have forced the speaker to look at his own ideas — and how they should be communicated — in a new light.

Forcing groups of people to create outstanding omelets from a handful of almost random ingredients may sound trivial. None of the creations will taste as good as the simpler, purer version you would eat at Mont-Saint-Michel. But from the experiment, you may be able to salvage some worthwhile innovations, and, if you’re lucky and have a keen eye, the seeds of next big thing.