Business Insight Zone

This downturn, brutal as it is, asks us to work within harsh constraints.

It’s tough to land financing. Both firms and individuals want to lock down risks — past what wisdom would call for. Many outfits will hoard cash to a fault and miss out, losing an opportunity to build up bookings as rivals flail around.

You know my bias: constraints bring opportunity. A wall blocking your path transforms into a backdrop for a surprising victory. You follow a 37signals or Toyota approach — many small, crisp innovations, constraints or no — and soon you look out upon horizons unknown.

Look back at this post: it’s not much, but I built it without using our lingua franca’s most common symbol (it stands fifth from A to Z), just as a particular acrostic-writing madman did in his book La Disparition (a.k.a. A Void).

I did it for a handful of words; that guy did it for many thousands, proving again that you can do all sorts of things with good motivation. (Financial survival, I find, is outstanding motivation.)

My gimmick in this post is a tiny thing. But what you do with it . . . that could stun us all.

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Related:

• Succeeding under constraints.
• Resource constraints and creative freedom.

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(Photo origin — CC-SA constraints.)