I am enjoying reading Dreaming in Code by Scott Rosenberg, co-founder of salon.com.  In the book, he chronicles the creation of a software program over the course of it's three year process.  While that may seem like a snooze, what's fascinating is the way he describes the creative process of developers. 

Rosenberg interviews Jason Fried the founder of the project management software called Basecamp.  "Constraints are the key to building a great product...They're what makes creativity happen.  If someone said you have all the money in the world to build whatever you want, it would probably never be released. Give me a just a month!"

This perspective mirrors one of my favorite thinkers - Rollo May.  He noted that when the claim is made that we have "unlimited possibilities", it de-energizes.  In fact, creativity comes from the tension between the limits, that the limits themselves are the edge where the innovation grows.

The 'thinking out of the box' cliche is not as helpful as thinking at the edges of the box, to examine the limits as value them as constraints that informe and instruct. The temptation is to fixate on the limits, whine about their existence and hypothesize how they got there.  But the key to creating new products, services and ideas is to use whatever limits present as the playing field of possibility.