Nickname: Dieter

Review: Marissa: I recently read that in some cases after your engineers come up with an idea they quit and form their own company to launch it. Do you ever review "outside" ideas?

Date reviewed: May 22, 2008 3:02 AM

Nickname: Trần Hữu Tuyến

Review: Excellent Basic Thought Leadership.

Date reviewed: Jul 11, 2007 1:56 AM

Nickname: Zach

Review: I completely agree. In fact, I recently blogged on this very topic, discussing ways to embrace constraint to push yourself to innovate (http://www.juiceanalytics.com/weblog/?p=72) .

Date reviewed: Feb 15, 2006 1:46 AM

Nickname: Yoni

Review: I couldn't agree more. Actually, one of the principles behind Systematic Inventive Thinking (SIT) is that "constraints enhance creativity". We often describe the method as "thinking inside the box" to generate innovation. The key is putting many, but the right, constraints into the process. In fact,we have published an article on the topic in the Harvard Business Review (March 2003) in case you are interested. It's called "Finding Your Innovation Sweet Spot" and here's a link to it: http://www.sitsite.com/data/documents/HBR%20Abstract.pdf

Date reviewed: Feb 14, 2006 9:38 AM

Nickname: djfreex

Review: Great article. Google does a great job of coming up with brand new ideas and adding to the old ones innovative twists. I personally disable toolbars that force themselves to install on your PC and come with certain "free" software. Google toolbar is probably the only toolbar I downloaded specifically to install and use. I also think constraints are great motivators if used correctly. They let you manage the project and take care of it in small chunks. In the software world they work great for listening to customer wants. If I don't like something or need a feature, I send a message to developers. If they get enough requests, they add it in. I love to see the evolution of a product. It is great to have a delete button on gmail for example!

Date reviewed: Feb 3, 2006 8:36 PM

Nickname: Rod Boothby

Review: Beautifully put. I've been working on creating an enterprise blogging platform for my firm of 130,000. We have found that setting some simple constraints and structure are critical to making the thing work. Examples include limiting people to types of enterprise blogs, such as People Pages, Project Blogs and Focus Pages. The structure is like the review process used by academic journals, in that it provides just enough of a framework to support true creativity. If you are interested in finding out more, check out my blog, www.innovationcreators.com, and especially the paper entitled "Turning Knowledge Workers into Innovation Creators"

Date reviewed: Feb 2, 2006 7:59 AM

Nickname: csven

Review: Excellent read. Much appreciated.

Date reviewed: Feb 1, 2006 5:32 PM

Nickname: Karthik

Review: This article is really insightful, and I completely agree with Mayer's point of view.

Date reviewed: Feb 1, 2006 7:51 AM