It’s 1992, and a young director is hustling to make his first movie. However, the budget is extremely low.
To fund his movie, he decides to participate in drug trials at a local medical research facility. He must make the best use out of everything he has.
That’s when he starts to write down a list containing anything he could get access to without spending money.
- A friend has a gas station: he will use that for some of the scenes.
- A friend owns a bus: that will also be used.
- A friend has a turtle: he will use that as well, as it makes the production value seem higher.
- And so on…
The film is launched, and people love it.
It was 1992; the director was Robert Rodriguez, and the movie was El Mariachi. According to Wikipedia, “The film is also recognized by Guinness World Records as the lowest-budgeted film ever to gross $1 million at the box office.”
Don’t wish for unlimited freedom
When we think about creativity, we often envision endless opportunities, imagining our ability to wield our creativity on an infinite canvas.
In reality, creativity is usually stimulated by boundaries and by the absence of options, rather than by endless options.
Constraints and boundaries are actually beneficial for creativity.
Let’s say someone asks you to write a story. Unless you are an avid reader and already have some stories in mind, it’s very likely you will just spend a lot of time thinking and won’t come up with much. However, if someone asks you to write the story of a boy who found a turtle in the street while coming back home from school, you’ve just been given some boundaries while at the same time stimulating your imagination.
From that short prompt, some will write a story about friendships; some will write a fantasy story (one where the turtle has some special powers…kind of like E.T. meets Ninja Turtles), and so on.
The same can be said about business ideas. Unless you are one of those people who is ALWAYS coming up with new ideas, chances are it’s hard for you to think of new ways to make money.
However, if someone told you to think about a better gym, your brain would start thinking in a much more focused way, and new ideas would come out much more easily.
A quick way to generate new ideas
A quick way to generate new ideas
There’s actually a specific technique used in companies such as Frog and IDEO. It’s called scamping, and it works like this:
- Take a business.
- Subdivide it into every piece it’s made of.
- Pick one, two, or three of those pieces and either delete them, augment them, or change them in some kind of way.
Let’s make an example and choose a restaurant.
Step 1: Let’s see what a restaurant is made of. Here’s what comes to my mind:
- The location is physical.
- The location is always the same.
- You have to pick your food from a menu.
- You (usually) don’t see the kitchen.
- You don’t know who cooks your food.
- Ingredients are chosen and bought by the restaurant.
- You don’t know how many calories you are eating (or the macros).
This would already be enough to generate some ideas, but let’s add something more:
- You eat in a big space along with other people you don’t know.
- It’s open during specific hours of the day.
- Prices are set by the restaurant.
When you deconstruct a business this way, you start to have new ideas. For example, let’s change just one item and pick number 7:
What if you could see how many calories and macros you are eating? From this single idea, you could imagine a restaurant for people who are into fitness: every dish displays the exact calories and macros, and you can choose according to your diet.
This focus alone could make marketing and branding much easier. You know you are not looking for families or people who are into fast food but for a specific kind of people.
Again: the constraint of thinking within specific boundaries will help you be more creative.
Quick story before we wrap up:
After El Mariachi was projected at the Sundance Festival, a man from a big production studio asked the young director to send him a trailer of the movie so he could share it internally with his team. A few days go by, and the man from the production company asked the director:
“How much did it cost?”
“Oh, well, roughly $7,000.”
“Wow, we usually spend three times that amount to make a trailer.”
And the director replied, “Oh, you meant just the trailer. No, no: $7,000 is how much I spent for the entire movie.”