There is a big push underway to increase creativity and innovation worldwide (and maybe within your company as well.) And that’s fine. But it is a little bit like coming out in favor of motherhood and apple pie if you just leave it there.
So to jump start the process, leaders sometimes say to their people ”if money weren’t an object,” what would you do to improve our company (or to create a new product or generate a new service.)
That question might spur creativity, but you need to realize the construct is just silly.
Money is always an object. Resources are always limited. Time is always of the essence.
You need to deal with the world as it is.
If you let creativity go about unfettered, i.e. you say “if money (time, whatever) is no object” you are going to get wonderful ideas. Robots that can do Excel spreadsheets; packages that deliver themselves to your customer’s door; travel via giant pogo sticks.
That’s lovely. But it’s not particularly helpful to anyone but fiction writers.
You need to tether that creativity to business goals. More specifically, you need to make sure all those wonderful thoughts and all that innovation you are encouraging leads to a potentially money making venture.
Creativity that isn’t tied directly to making money is simply a waste of time. It might be fun as a hobby when you are off-the-clock, but it does you little good at work.
That’s why all the retraints you are under are a good thing. You can say, “given the situation we have, what can we do to satisfy a very specific customer need.” That way everyone is focusing their most creative thoughts on ideas that can lead to money making ventures instead of math geek robots.
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