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Why Constraints Make You More Creative, Not Less | Dr. Catrinel Tromp

• Mark Blackwell • Episode 50

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We're told to think outside the box. But what if the box is your greatest creative asset? Dr. Catrinel Tromp explains the cognitive science behind why constraints drive innovation — and why the most dangerous barriers are the ones you've stopped questioning.

Think outside the box. Blue sky thinking. Start with a blank canvas. It's advice we hear constantly — but what if it's wrong?

Dr. Catrinel Tromp, professor of psychology at Rider University and specialist in the cognitive science of creativity, argues that creativity doesn't flourish despite constraints — it flourishes because of them. Her research, which began at Princeton and was tested in Manhattan's hedge fund world, reveals something counterintuitive: when you narrow the search space, you actually expand the possibilities.

In this conversation, Catrinel shares:

The Green Eggs and Ham Hypothesis — Dr. Seuss wrote a bestseller using just 50 words. Catrinel's own experiments show that everyday people produce more creative results when given random constraints than when given total freedom.

Fixed vs Faux Fixed Constraints — Most of the barriers organisations treat as immovable are nothing of the sort. "That's just how our industry works" is rarely a fact — it's an unchallenged assumption. The best leaders distinguish between genuine boundaries and inherited habits.

The Carryover Effect — People who practise working under constraints don't just perform better in the moment. The creative benefit persists even after the constraints are removed. The skill transfers.

The White Bear Effect — Framing constraints as "don'ts" triggers avoidance and self-monitoring. Framing them as "dos" provides direction and a starting point. Leaders who understand this difference unlock more creative teams.

Constraint Fluency — The best organisations don't wait for a crisis to practise working with constraints. They embed constraint experimentation into daily operations, building the creative muscle before it's needed.

Catrinel also explores why water scarcity produced premium tomatoes and drip irrigation, how the black pearl market was created by reframing a "defect," and why AI prompt engineering is essentially constraint mastery.

About our guest: Dr. Catrinel Tromp earned her PhD from Princeton University and spent years in Manhattan working at a major hedge fund and co-owning a recruiting firm. She is a professor of psychology at Rider University, where she specialises in the cognitive science of creativity and innovation. Her research has been featured by the BBC, the New York Times and leading scientific journals. She is also an abstract oil painter.

Other Arkaro Insights guests referenced in this episode:

  • Stephen Wunker — The Playground Paradox
  • Vlad Glaveanu — Possibility studies and Slow AI
  • Dr. Zorana Ivcevic Pringle — Creativity research
  • Scott Anthony — Epic Disruptions and the Bethlehem Steel story

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Speaker 1:

Constraints themselves don't magically produce creativity. Just because somebody throws a constraint at you doesn't mean that it will automatically or necessarily yield a creative outcome. What happens is, and especially the more you practice with constraints, the mind gets used to, builds a very good cognitive habit and becomes more comfortable searching in more specific areas, sometimes by incorporating concepts that aren't typically put together. I think the most creative people are really adept at even self-imposing constraints, even when they're faced with a blank canvas or a blank sheet of paper. The mind knows how to search better and how to self-constrain better in order to create more unexpected outcomes and uncover possibilities that maybe others wouldn't think about.

Mark Blackwell:

Hi everyone, welcome to Arkaro Insights. This is the podcast for be bet to be executives to thrive in a complex, adaptive world. And this is a world where creativity and innovation is only beginning to become even more important to manage the uncertainty and the changes in the world that we're we're facing. We often hear that to innovate we need to think outside the box, to have blue sky thinking and not be bound by anything. And we need a blank canvas and total freedom. Is that right? Well, today we're going to question some of this thinking. What if this advice, this sense that you need to think of limitations as barriers, is actually wrong? What if the limitations are your greatest asset to create superb innovation? And so today's guest argues that creativity doesn't happen, not because we have constraints, but because we do have constraints. And she's developed a framework that helps leaders distinguish between the walls that they must respect and that the imaginary boundaries in their heads that are holding their teams back. Joining us today is Dr. Catrinel Tromp. Catrinel is a professor of psychology at Ride University, specializing in the cognitive science of creativity and innovation. She brings a rare combination of both academic rigor and high-stakes commercial experience. After earning her PhD from Princeton, she spent years in Manhattan working in a major hedge fund and co-owning a recruiting firm. She's also an abstract oil painter. And her research has been featured by the BBC, the New York Times, and leading scientific journals. Catrinel, welcome to our Caro Insights.

Speaker 1:

Thank you so much for having me here.

Mark Blackwell:

Looking forward to a fascinating discussion. We've touched on this um a couple of times with previous guests on how constraints enable innovation. But today that's a deep dive. And I really want to understand how your journey got there. So starting out, you were an academic at Princeton, got your PhD, but then you headed down to Manhattan. Was there anything in the first few years moving from academia to Manhattan that made you think about constraints in the real commercial world?

Speaker 1:

That's an interesting question. Interestingly, actually, my thinking about constraints and creativity really predates anything I've done in business. In graduate school, this was really the first project, the first research project, the first conference presentation I did on the role of constraints in creative thinking. At the time, this was you know a couple of decades ago, this was um a rather counterintuitive idea, and maybe it still is, but less so today. So I already was primed for sort of being on the lookout for constraints and how they could potentially actually help in a vision and strategic and creative thinking. Then I got into the business world, and with these ideas in mind, I was astonished by just how pervasive constraints are just in day-to-day operations, how important it is to be comfortable and to react to constraints appropriately. We'll talk maybe briefly about mindset and attitudes, being open to experimenting with different constraints, trying to uncover opportunities when others might see obstacles. So all of this, I didn't think of it formally at the time, but in hindsight, yes, a lot of these thoughts that I brought from graduate school and from a more theoretical and sort of lab experimental setting, I brought them into the business world. And I think they shaped and encouraged me to experiment and do more with constraints than I otherwise would have.

Mark Blackwell:

One of your famous stories is something called the green eggs and ham hypothesis, which is inspired by Dr. Zeus. Maybe in America, everyone knows about Dr. Zeus, but you may need to just uh step back and give one or two explanations of Dr. Zeus and why this is such a fascinating story about constraints.

Speaker 1:

Yes, right. Very interesting because I when I introduced this idea of, again, it seemed paradoxical at the time that constraints can actually benefit creativity rather than hinder it. We would hear stories of exceptional innovation and people who have indeed done very well creatively in response to constraints, in response even to conditions of scarcity. So you see creative outcomes coming from constraints. And then I think people would hear these stories and they would say, well, yes, but these were exceptionally gifted business founders, entrepreneurs, or scientists, or writers or artists. That's not me, right? I couldn't quite do that. And the story of the Green Eggs and Ham sort of illustrates that that Dr. Seuss, um, is known, this was his pseudonym, a writer and illustrator called Theodore Geisel, who was challenged to write a bestseller, a children's book, using no more than 50 of the same words. You know, people might say, well, yes, of course, he was able to do this, and it did become a commercial success, at least in the United States. So he was able to do this, but that's because he's already a very gifted writer and had an agent and a publisher. Um, very gifted also illustrator. So what I was interested in doing is using a much more, well, ordinary, everyday creative task that all of us have done at some point in our lives, and this was what a decade ago, I did these experiments where I asked participants, human participants, to create, to generate creative messages on a particular topic. Way back when more people used to write on a card, a blank card, write by hand with a pen or a pencil, happy birthday or thank you, or whatever other message, I'm sorry, I love you, happy new year, etc. So this was before Chat GPT and before any other help. So, and in one condition, I asked participants to do this task under the constraint of having to include a randomly selected word. Carrot, vest, sheep, something that has nothing to do with the message that they're conceiving. So I found that indeed their their responses were more creative when they were forced to ask to force to include, incorporate this additional word. And yeah.

Mark Blackwell:

Than if they had a blank canvas, than if you said, you know, just write away whatever you want.

Speaker 1:

Compared to that condition, this was in a way the control condition. I mean, it was the task is somewhat constrained because you have a goal, there's a message, there's a topic given to you, but nothing beyond that. And what most of us tend to do is when I say happy birthday, what comes to mind are candles and confetti and birthday cakes. And these are cliches, right? So when you're forced to think in a more semantically distant way and having to bring in concepts that don't usually go with that, then that makes the task a bit more challenging, but also the outcome more creative.

Mark Blackwell:

Yeah, it reminds me Zarana Pringle was challenged me to think about uses of a brick. And I started off with breaking a window, and then she said, Now, what if you were in an artistic environment? And of course, ideas flooded through about painting it, using it as paint, changing the surface of things. I mean, it is absolutely I felt that burst of creativity by having just a completely felt to me a random idea added to me.

Speaker 1:

Well, it's remarkable how it happens, right? And it's it is counterintuitive because in a way you're narrowing down the search space to a particular domain or an area, and you're thinking, how can I use the brick in in a school or in a bedroom or in a particular domain in cooking? And then you can think of more ideas than if you have, yeah, a blue sky type ideation.

Mark Blackwell:

So cognitively, what's happening to the brain when we do this addition of a constraint beyond the blue sky thinking?

Speaker 1:

Well, very, very important question. I'm glad you're asking it. Um I want to point out that constraints themselves don't magically uh produce negativity. So just because somebody throws a constraint at you doesn't mean that it will automatically or necessarily yield a creative outcome. What happens is, and especially the more you practice with constraints, the mind gets used to, builds a very good um cognitive habit and becomes more comfortable searching in more specific areas, sometimes by incorporating concepts that aren't typically put together. So that even when you you start by somebody giving you external constraints, I think the most creative people are really adept at even self-imposing constraints, even when they're faced with a blank canvas or a blank sheet of paper. So the mind knows how to search better and how to self-constrain better in order to create more unexpected outcomes and uncover possibilities that maybe others wouldn't think about.

Mark Blackwell:

So I'm just thinking about that simply. I just imagine the brain as synapses and making connections. And my what I'm hearing from you is just forcing more connections in a in a more localized space or something like that.

Speaker 1:

That's right. So there are many ways to think about it in terms of semantic distance. You can then play and design different constraints to best suit that um, whatever the task might be. So if a concept is more semantically distant, like farther away, and two concepts don't normally go together, then you're forced, like in fusion cuisine, two things that you wouldn't normally, two cultures that you think are really different, it's more challenging to find commonalities and bring them together. But once you do, you really do hit the jackpot.

Mark Blackwell:

If you've got some novel food as a result of just unexpected frustrating.

Speaker 1:

It's also quite good. And it's no guarantee that it will happen. But I think this is why I my emphasis is encouraging people to really play around with and experiment and practice with different constraints. You build that skill so that you're really good at it and you you persist beyond the cliches, beyond what most people would, beyond what first pops into our minds, which are just regular associations. Yeah.

Mark Blackwell:

So looking through your work, you've don't just think of categories as just limitations, or you've got a lot of categories, and you help business people think through to organize them. And I came across your iconic model. And you talk about fixed constraints and faux fixed constraints. Can you explain something about this?

Speaker 1:

Yes, absolutely. It's a mistake to assume that most that constraints are all the constraints are immovable. In fact, most constraints are not fixed. Very few of them are set in stone, immovable, right? The laws of physics. We can talk a little bit about regulation because this seems to be an area that's very relevant to business. So I think very good leaders and very good teams and organizations are adept at distinguishing between constraints that are really immovable, set in stone, fixed. There is no way to work around them, and those that are flexible. And the problem, and it might seem like a very straightforward, obvious distinction when we describe it like this, but actually, there are a lot of really flexible constraints that masquerade as fixed. And that's because, and that's what I call faux fixed constraints. It really is because we've, this is the way we've been doing things for a long time. There are assumptions that are embedded in there that make it appear as if there is no other way. This is really a fixed constraint. More often than not, that is really just not the case. And so this distinction is extraordinarily important. And again, the best organizations are able to make this distinction correctly for the fixed constraints that are set in stone, accept them early rather than bemoan them and complain about them and waste a lot of energy, emotional energy, and find a way to work within the new limitations. For the flexible constraints, try to see what you can do. Do you really want to work within them? Can you tweak them? Can you change them? Might there be an alternative way of framing them? Again, we can look at specific examples, but they're there, even in, yeah, maybe you'll you'll ask, or we can talk about this now, um, about specific domains like agriculture or the food industry and so on.

Mark Blackwell:

Well, I maybe just moving towards that, something that's featured in several podcasts, and it was an idea that first presented by Stephen Wonka, and uh it's called the playground paradox. I will say it again for anyone who's not heard it. If you put children in a playground, which is in an open field, they stick to the swings and the roundabouts because they create this imaginary constraint that they shouldn't go further than them. But if you put a fence 20 meters out around the um swings and roundabouts, that fit that constraint I m I'm in your language, this goes from a faux fixed to a fixed, I'm thinking.

Speaker:

That's right.

Mark Blackwell:

And now they have got more space because it's become clarified where the boundaries are in the situation.

Speaker 1:

Exactly. And even for exactly right. So, and we can apply it really across domains, really for day-to-day problem solving for children and how they approach play to businesses and and science and so on. So, really establishing what the parameters are, questioning some assumptions that may appear to be fixed but are actually not is really, really important. And even for regulations, uh, I think that's a really interesting example and category. There's regulation and there's the interpretation of regulation. And what are core assumptions that we might think are embedded in it that are actually not? Um, yeah.

Mark Blackwell:

No, totally right. If you've just had a third party reading of the legislation, you just assume that to be true without reading it via sir. So, what techniques do you advise business leaders or facilitators when teams are trying to solve problems to differentiate between fixed and faux fixed and spend their time most effectively on challenging the faux fixed?

Speaker 1:

I think I have made the argument that leaders in general, the really the best leaders are the ones who are effective at constraint management and then constraint the leveraging. So making the distinction early and having the experience, really, we come back to this idea of practice. One really should just practice, embed constraints in everyday organizational operations, really. So the more you build that creative muscle, creativity under constraints, the easier it becomes proactively, the easier it becomes to then um yeah, to then respond to externally imposed constraints of the regulatory type that might seem to come out of nowhere and over which you that might be fixed. So I think distinct first practice, just practice with all sorts of constraints willingly and proactively before a crisis happens, before a new regulation is is imposed, which one has to react, and then encourage the organization, kind of model this constraint fluency, encourage all the organization, not just the leadership, everyone in the organization to develop this comfort with different constraints. The distinction I think is important, and I'll give you the an example from agriculture that doesn't include regulation this time. Water scarcity. There's been an issue, and it's a less an ideal constraint, and let's just assume that it is fixed, right? There's not enough water. There are drought conditions for one reason or another. And we have seen so many examples of innovation and as a direct result of this natural resource scarcity, drip irrigation. Where traditional irrigation fails, people have thought, how can we have more precise methods of delivering water to the plants in the form of drip irrigation? We know that tomato plants can actually yield a much more intense, smaller fruit, but also more intensely flavored, because their roots go down deeper, right? And then they extract smaller fruit, much more high-end, maybe highly priced. And under those constraints, then maybe you have fewer or smaller or less weight, I guess, in terms of the final product, but a more premium product, right?

Mark Blackwell:

Both tasty, yes. Yes, exactly.

Speaker 1:

And we know, in fact, that that chefs and those who are skilled, sometimes they get tomatoes that are very watery and they add salt to drain the water and intensify the flavor. So now you have, you know, you can think of different marketing. You can think you might have, in a sense, a very different product, and maybe the metrics, the way in which you, you know, you don't focus so much on weight, on yield, but rather on what the quality of the product. So, yeah, even under fixed constraints, it's possible with the right mindset to turn them into and to ask the question to get back to your question, what can leaders do? I think it's also important for them to ask, to reframe the way we think about constraints, including fixed ones, and say, instead of what does this prevent us from doing, ask what new possibilities does this suggest? And it can be again regulation, it could be water scarcity, it could be in the food industry, we now have um right restrictions on preservatives and synthetic um anything really that that changes the formulation of and and the packaging. So now we see innovation in in fermentation and and um various techniques to preserve food that benefits that not only are profitable but also respond to consumer demand and they align with new regulation. So I think fixed constraints aren't bad, uh, nor are flexible ones. In fact, they can suggest new possibilities.

Mark Blackwell:

And any examples come to mind of how teams have moved faux fixed constraints out of the system to creativity.

Speaker 1:

Yes, that's a really interesting question. I think we often hear companies, businesses saying, well, that's just how our industry works. This is not possible because that's not how we operate. And for example, you and I, I think grew up in an era where if we wanted to buy a book or borrow a book, we would go to a physical location and do that. And this we never really questioned this. It was just an assumption, something that there were alternatives. And until online shopping and online publishing and all these other alternatives came to the surface. So someone questioned that initial fixed, faux fixed constraint and turned it into a really a transformative innovation that and many, many other markets followed as a result. Another version of this is well, there's no market for it and the customer won't pay for it, and so on. And a classic example here is white pearls. For the longest time, really for centuries, white pearls were considered the standard. This was the definition of a valuable gem. And anything else, particularly black pearls, were in fact considered defective, maybe curiosities at best, until, and again, this was centuries worth of what we would think of a fixed constraint, until someone, a very clever uh framing and marketing, turned those, yeah, the scarcity of the black pearls and their distinctiveness into something that people would want and into really a valuable proposition. So, really keeping in mind this idea that full fixed constraints are just conceptual categories that we have created and embedded so deeply that we just forget to question them and treat them just as assumption and we just normalize them.

Mark Blackwell:

No, I I like that very much because often when I hear this type of thing, we're thinking about what we're capable of doing. You know, we must have a shop. But you've added a beautiful new twist about thinking about what customers' perceptions, customers' needs, customers' desires, they change all the time. They've that they're much more malleable than some of the hard bricks and mortar constraints that we think we have. So that's that's a precise example. And well, I suppose another way is how we Just our stereotypes and our views about people that we just hold assumptions that are unstated, and unless we bring those out and challenge them, we might be limiting our creative potential.

Speaker 1:

Absolutely. And there unfortunately, there's so many of them around us, including for creativity and older adults. We know there's research that we tend to evaluate older adults as more negatively, the creativity of older adults more negatively than that of younger ones, even though it might be the same idea just because it comes from somewhat older. These are just assumptions that very much fall under the category of faux fixed constraints.

Mark Blackwell:

Because there's no data to support it or anything. So maybe it's just a good practice to assume every constraint is a faux constraint until you've prove it to be otherwise. And another character creation that you lose and I like was the the don'ts and the do's, and how how a leader, who I'm getting this message, the role of a leader or facilitator is to organize the constraints for the team to create a box or a space or something for them to work in. What does that mean in the do's and the don'ts?

Speaker 1:

Well, it's an interesting distinction, also cognitively, because of course they do work together, they're complementary, they're two sides of the same coin, really. And most of everything we do in life is essentially a matrix of do's and don'ts. But there's a difference also cognitively in how we process this. Don'ts tend to focus the mind, can sort of scatter attention, focus us on avoidance and also on um self-monitoring. We there's a well-known um white bear effect. The more you tell somebody don't think of a white bear or whatever it might be, a slice of chocolate cake, the more difficult it is to suppress that thought, and the more your mind is focused on monitoring to make sure you're avoiding it. There's a focusing constraint of the sort to do this or use this or include this word in a in a message, for example, tend to focus and provide direction for where the mind and a starting point for the search for a creative solution. Cognitively there I think that they do something quite different. And there's also negativity bias. Most of all, we know that we are much more attuned to negative information. There's an evolution or a reason for this, of course, if you're aware of threats in your environment. So anytime you frame something, a constraint as a don't, we tend to process it differently than a do. So they're less creativity-friendly and more sort of cognitively toxic. So you ask the question, well, for leaders, what can they do? It is about strategically framing constraints more ideally as do's rather than don'ts. Let us explore what happens.

Mark Blackwell:

But there's a role for the you know, the white bear effect. That was fascinating because of our evolutionary fear of if you think the team is a little bit negative, you can play that to your advantage. That's that's interesting.

Speaker 1:

Everyone has this. We tend to remember negative information more. So, how do we play it to our advantage also for creativity rather than just explain, yeah, why people have the bias and so on?

Mark Blackwell:

One of the big themes of this podcast is moving from the old-fashioned world, which is a sort of a command and control world, which is described as Lamo, linear, anthropocentric, mechanistic, ordered. And people would think about strategy design as a linear process, and we have a five-year plan, and as we'll hit our goals every year, and more people are moving towards a VUCO or even a Barney world where we realize it's complex and the world is uncertain. People are increasingly saying, Well, we used to be certain of what our plan was, but now our certainty is really probably more the constraints, and within that space is where we operate. So we don't have certainty on the exact path of action, but we do have certainty about what we can't do or what's limiting us. And the phrase is enabling constraints is becoming very popular in the literature. I wonder if you could talk to that a bit.

Speaker 1:

Well, yes, some people do talk about enabling constraints. It's phrase, and I think I would say it's almost um yeah, on treason, where of course constraints are enabling, in my theory, in my model. So I would say change management change is the name of the game. Of course, that's what in an increasingly and rapidly changing environment. I think the best thing we can do is just train for change and train and understand, build the skill of leveraging and managing constraints. And so once we do do this routinely and proactively and willingly, just playing around and experimenting with different ones, when change does happen externally, it's just, well, just another opportunity to innovate, right? It's not it's business as usual rather than goodness, we're freezing. What should we do now?

Mark Blackwell:

So I that absolutely. I another technique that I hear you talk about is foraging and cycling. In other words, there's this tension between do I have enough constraints to work with, or is it time to actually find some more of these constraints which can enable the process? What would you suggest about working on that?

Speaker 1:

It's interesting. With my colleague uh Kelsey Madeiros, we we talk about what's called a constraint ecosystem. And all organizations operate in teams within this ecosystem of constraints because they come from different sources. Each of us bring our own perspective or knowledge, which does constrain the way we frame a problem, the way we conceive solutions. And then there are constraints that are organizational, regulatory, cultural, societal, desitgeist, economic conditions, and so on. So all of this constrains how we approach a problem and how we approach innovation at a specific domain as well. So it's very difficult to find that Goldilocks zone, that sweet spot, not too constrained, not too much. And in fact, I would say again, this might seem more radical, but it's a more sat more satisfying answer. I think the more constraints, the better. If we train the mind, let's add, let us add more, more tightly constrained and see what we can squeeze, what innovation these very tightly constrained conditions suggest. That preparation then prepares then then sets us off in a good direction, even when constraints get loosened. So my view is to be much more aggressive and say instead of removing and and adding constraints, and that is indeed what happens in the problem-solving process, a sort of accordion metaphor. Sometimes we have to but it's much harder to teach and to train people to do that. That comes with a lot of experience, years, decades of it, to develop that intuitive feel for when we should add more and fewer. I think most people what they need is just comfort with working with more constraints rather than fewer.

Mark Blackwell:

Well, because it leads into the next question. I've got we've spoken a lot, I would call about pretty explicit constraints. Not enough money, not enough people, not enough time, not enough regulatory resources, or what too much regulatory, or something that we'd call tangible constraints. But the reality, there's a lot of sort of what I call hidden constraints that people are uncomfortable about sharing or aren't so visible, like people's fear of taking action, politics in the group, hierarchy, psychological safety. What would you say about making these, adding these to your list of constraints or working with them in a problem-solving situation?

Speaker 1:

What a great, great um question in so many ways, because these are excellent examples of very common, what I would call faux fixed constraints, again, that are often overlooked, especially at the organizational level. So exactly the sort that you um you mentioned. For example, if somebody wants to innovate, they must go through RD, a particular department that we created only for that purpose to innovate. Or this idea must go through three or 17 layers of approval, or we can't possibly, I don't know, partner with our competitors, and so on. So you're absolutely right that these are the sorts of very different constraints, hidden, very uncomfortable to surface, but it's really important to do so. They're based on fear, they're based on politics, inherited rules, and they really create invisible fences that prevent people from engaging with creativity in the first place. So, in order for businesses to innovate, if a business wants to do that, and I would say in today's environment, it's not even an option anymore. It's really very much a necessity to innovate and stay nimble. Some businesses might think, well, innovation and what you're talking about, uncovering these constraints and addressing them, this involves some risk and some discomfort. And I would say complacency is even riskier, right? So in order to innovate, you have to have the right conditions. And exactly you pointed out so well, the psychological safety for people to feel comfortable, to reframe problems, to engage in ideation and in prototyping, to normalize even learning from mistakes or from ideas that don't initially work and continue. Really, anything that encourages and makes what I would say possibility exploration legitimate in an organization is very much worth doing and should be done. And this is what my colleague Vlad Glavaneau and I call possibility literacy. This is really the skill that I think every employee at every organization should have and should become adept at developing, and the organization should encourage the cultivation of these skills.

Mark Blackwell:

Now, fascinated to hear what you're doing with Vlad about possibility studies. And Vlad's obviously been another guest on the show. It does tie in as I hear what you're saying about these constraints that we have, these faux constraints, about another guest called Scott Anthony, when he was talking about his book Epic Disruptions. The most famous disruption story is, of course, that of Nucor and Bethlehem Steel, where a small company came to take out Bethlehem Steel. But Scott tells the story from not from the perspective of Nucor, as most authors do, but from the perspective of Bethlehem Steel. And he talks about the three ghosts of Bethlehem Steel, which is their part their past constraints, their perceived current constraints, and their perceived future constraints as an organization, which means that they could see Newcore coming at them. There was no argument, yet they could not move as an organization, because they felt that their job was just to keep driving productivity. They felt that they were located in Bethlehem and they could not imagine another way to be, even when the enemy was at the door.

Speaker 1:

That's right. What a great, great story. I wasn't aware of this other perspective. It's exactly it. So if anybody ever questions the need to innovate and create and stay nimble, well, remember stories like these, great.

Mark Blackwell:

I'm coming back to the playground paradox and the need to break those perceived barriers and create the psychological safety up front early on. You talked a lot about practice. Um, and you've got something I found fascinating called the carryover effect. So that in this actually lasts with people. Can you tell me more about that?

Speaker 1:

Right. So this was also a finding from a series of experiments I did where not only were people more creative under a constraint condition, but that effect lasted even after the constraints were removed. And this I would love to see much more, much more data and more replication of this effect. But I think it's something that we see in the real world more often than than not, people who have been exposed to constraints and have leveraged those constraints successfully tend to gain more confidence and learn some tricks and how to then even self-impose constraints under conditions of complete freedom. So, for example, in in writing and in art, we know that there are people who are creating um limitations within which they can then um yeah, create and explore new possibilities. Writers who go to a particular location, add a lot of detail, and then build around it. And now in design thinking, for example, in business, businesses who explore what the customers want and then have that as a starting point for innovation.

Mark Blackwell:

The constraint of the customer need is fabulous and often far too much ignored. But the technology thing is interesting. Zarana mentioned this idea of professional photographers in the age of digital photography and all these wonderful innovations that Canon and Sony now give us of mirrorless cameras and the like decided to go back to old-fashioned analog cameras, as I call them, with film and impose a constraint to make them more creative.

Speaker:

Quite right, yeah.

Mark Blackwell:

Bringing me to for the elephant in the room that I'm immediately thinking about now is AI. Because you talked about writing and any creative generative thing has suddenly become so much easier for us to do as human people, you know, we can say, Oh, well, and I got an email to write and get Claude to go and do it for me.

Speaker:

That's right.

Speaker 1:

But it's an excellent point, and this is where I would argue that that even this yeah, booming uh new area of of uh prompt design, right? Prompting engineering is essentially now a mastery of constraints. You can't just tell Claude or Chat GPT, give me an email, because they will give you an email, but it doesn't reflect exactly what you had in mind. It doesn't capture the parameters, the tone, the specific humor you might add, that's and so on. So I think, yes, there are many more possibilities that that AI can present to us and much more faster, but much faster than we could produce them. On the other hand, I mean the humans are ultimately in this context too, like the I guess masters, the architects of constraints, right? We have to impose limits and both of the exclusive sort, do not do this, do not include these words or these concepts, for example, and also a direction. Do do this, focus on this, use a particular way of framing it, and so on. So I think, yeah, humans, sure, technology does allow us to do far more and faster, more efficiently, but without the human input. And I would say again, for constraints, it's not that useful nor that creative.

Mark Blackwell:

Exactly what Scott Anthony said. The right way is the hard way. Invest time on the constraints. And Vlad Glavaneau was talking about his work with Ron Baghetto on slow AI. In as much as, whilst it's tempting to get the quick answer, we can be human creative and excel, but we have to learn to work with this tool much more than just taking the first thing that comes out to really make ourselves get the human element with the tool.

Speaker 1:

So now I was going to say that Vlad Glavaneau is also a collaborator, wonderful one. And we're talking about now possibility literacy, a really great, I think, interesting concept where people have to become aware of not only the possibilities that can be uncovered, but how to go about it, how to uncover possibilities and how to, yeah, it at this point in time when we have AI, but also leverage constraints in the process.

Mark Blackwell:

So thank you. I think there's a lot more work, and I'd encourage Vlad and yourself and all the other workers teach us how to use AI more responsibly. And the paradoxic that I think many people have realized, if we can we can make ourselves more human and excel our human creative skills if we learn how to work with these tools.

Speaker:

Exactly. Yeah. Exactly.

Mark Blackwell:

Brilliant. So, Katrinov, thank you for helping us see the fences in our business not as cages, but as opportunities to create. It's been a it's been a great discussion. Where can people find out more about what you're doing in the world and your work?

Speaker 1:

Um, I think if you Google my name, Katrinel Tromp, T R O M P, uh it's an unusual enough name to take you to my website uh at Ryder University, and then Google Scholars, where I publish, where I list the publications.

Mark Blackwell:

Brilliant. Thank you, Catrinel. Thank you for watching this episode of Arcaro Insights, everyone. If you'd like more tools for thriving in an adaptive world, hit the subscribe button now and share this with a colleague who's currently just staring at a blank canvas and not knowing what to do. We'll see you again. And thank you, Catrinel, once again. Really appreciate your time. Thank you.

Speaker:

My friend.

Mark Blackwell:

Bye bye.

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Mark Blackwell

Host
Head Shot

Catrinel Tromp

Guest

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