We’ve all heard that necessity is the mother of invention, meaning that limitations can lead to a breakthrough.
In practice usually we think of necessity and limitations as a pain in the behind.
However, reality often bears out the cliche, as in the case of one of the members of the Monty Python group, Terry Gilliam.
In his pre-Monty Python days, Terry Gilliam did caricatures for a show called “We Have Ways of Making You Laugh.” He suggested doing an animated short film for them and he told Vice magazine “They gave me two weeks and £400 [$600} to make it. The only way to do that was to simply cut out the drawings and move them around. No one had ever seen anything like that on television before, and overnight I became an animator. [laughs] That started a second season of Do Not Adjust Your Set. There were six of us then, and that became Python.”
It’s interesting how often limitations lead to something innovative–if we approach them creatively instead of fighting them.
Make a list of the limitations that you find the most frustrating about your business. Then take some time to brainstorm how you could embrace them instead of fighting them. It might just lead you to a breakthrough, too.
