If you don’t work in a creative field, you may not realize how stifling it can be to face a blank canvas or blank page. In other words, giving your teams total creative freedom may have the opposite affect you’re trying to create.

In fact, applying constraints can actually improve creative output. It may seem counterintuitive, but it can produce results.

One of Google’s top creative officers believes in boxing in the creative mind in order to get the best ideas.

Additionally, this post from Fast Company talks about the value of applying constraints and offers some other ideas to improve creative thinking.

The bottom line is that if you want to cultivate the best ideas, creative restraints and parameters may get you there quicker than total creative freedom.