Scarcity Breeds Creativity

Entrepreneurs live in a world of scarcity. Scarcity of time. Scarcity of talent. Scarcity of treasure. The scarcity of resources is what triggers us to become more creative when confronted with a problem.

By making these 3 elements scarce, time, talent, and treasure, it forces us to fully evaluate what we have to work with. If we have an abundance of any of these 3 elements, we then have more choices to consider. And with all these choices we now have too many possibilities to consider.

Imagine if you were asked to innovate on a solution for transporting, by foot, enough water for a family of four to drink, clean and bathe, across a distance of 5 miles. You are given an abundance of time, money and team members to solve this problem. If this happened you would not have the conditions necessary for your imaginative mind to ideate on a new and unthought-of solution. You would be saddled by taking the time to evaluate all the team members’ skills and abilities. Then you would spend more time and money in meetings evaluating everyone’s ideas. Once all the ideas are cataloged you have to try and reach a consensus for a solution. Once the team had a consensus for a solution it would be shared with the leadership team and the death spiral of “risk mitigation” would begin. This is not the optimal environment to be creative.

Let’s pretend you were in an airplane crash in the desert. You have to rapidly get enough water back to the injured to keep them alive. In this pretend scenario you would be forced to become hyper-creative and solve the problem with what you have. By limiting the time, treasure/resources and talent/people it forces us to fully understand the availability of what we have, more quickly (fewer options), and act on the idea (less consensus needed).

Scarcity breeds urgency.When you have a scarcity of time in a startup, decisions have to be made quickly without the “risk mitigation” a corporation would expect. In the military, we have a saying. If you’re not moving, you’re dead. This was ingrained in me from day one when I served. Move. No matter what, make the decision to move. In business, movement for me is innovation. Innovation means “the introduction of something new”. Without the word, “introduction” innovation would just be an idea. “Introduction” implies movement. Corporate innovation teams should constantly be introducing new concepts, technologies, opportunities, and products to their customers. Most will fail. And that is ok. You can’t make more time so better to try and fail than to miss the opportunity altogether.

Scarcity breeds truth.When you have a scarcity of talent/people in a startup, decisions (movement) happens quicker. You have no weighted down opinions promoted through “risk mitigation”. A weighted opinion is one in which the most senior person’s opinion is given more significance only for the reason that they are senior. In cognitive psychology, this is called the Authority bias. An Authority bias is the tendency to attribute greater accuracy to the opinion of an authority figure (unrelated to its content) and be more influenced by that opinion. Authority biases are one of the primary reason’s innovations fail.

In the startup world, founders actively try to foster truth over politics. As a founder of many startups, I have had the pleasure of seeing a junior person on my team educate me on a new tech trend or topic, in front of everyone in the company. In startups, we do not have time to play politics or show title-based deference.

Scarcity breeds agility.When you have a scarcity of treasure/money in a startup you have less choice in all aspects of a business. And this can be a good thing. Corporations spend stupid amounts of money on meaningless things. Million-dollar research reports to alleviate their fears of entering a new market. Million-dollar contracts with the Big 5 consulting firms to have the illusion that they have the right team to innovate. All this money spent by corporations to not feel afraid. Imagine if you took the millions spent to analyze if a corporation should innovate (fear) and instead spent it on actual innovations (courage). Instead of buying research innovate on an idea and get real results from actual customers. Instead of hiring more MBA’s from Big 5 consulting firms partner with savvy startup entrepreneurs.

Startup entrepreneurs know how to “bootstrap” an idea. They know how to get innovation done on the cheap. And it is in this low-capital environment that great ideas form. When you have to stretch every dollar for your business to survive you come up with creative ideas. Startup entrepreneurs do not need million-dollar reports or overpaid consultants to tell them if an idea will work. They spend their precious capital building intellectual property and sharing it with customers. The worst case is their idea fails and they have some intellectual property that they use to pivot to what will work.

Scarcity breeds hope.The scarcity of resources was the environment that an amazing innovation called the Hippo Roller was created. Over 750 million people suffer from a scarcity of safe drinking water. In Africa alone, over half of its population lack access to the most basic of water sources such as wells or taps. Women and children are forced to carry five-gallon buckets of water, weighing 41 pounds, balanced on their heads for hours a day. Then the most amazing, and in retrospect obvious solution was created.

By taking a 24-gallon barrel, placing it on its side and attaching a handle for steering. This incredible innovation now enabled 24 gallons of water to be “rolled” by a single person, over rough terrain, quickly and easily. This idea was brought to life, not by huge NGO’s or by a large team sponsored with millions from a corporation. It was created by two people, with scarce resources, who saw the problem first hand and wanted to help. And like all great innovations the Hippo Roller, once released into the wild, was further innovated on by its customers. The Hippo Roller is now also used as a cart to carry goods, a roadside stand to sell goods, and a stretcher to carry the injured. Once people saw its utility they expanded even further. The Hippo Roller is also used as a firefighting tool and as a small-scale garden irrigator through the inclusion of an innovative hand-pump that requires no external power. A whole ecosystem of innovation not created through abundance, but from scarcity.

Scarcity breeds innovation.The Hippo Roller is the perfect model of innovation in scarcity. What I love about it is the collaborative nature that sprung up because of it. Entrepreneurs sharing ideas on how to leverage it with other entrepreneurs. The end-users did not let lack of time, talent, or treasure stop them from solving problems beyond that of carrying water. As a community of like-minded, scrappy entrepreneurs, they expanded the Hippo Roller into a variety of other uses. No long meetings searching for consensus. No highly skilled technical staff. No expensive multi-variant testing and focus groups. The creators and users of the Hippo Roller had problems to solve. Because they had no choice but to operate in scarcity they tapped into their creativity and just solved the problem. No corporate MBA’s needed.

Scarcity breeds elegant ideas.In my career, I have ideated with both scarcity and with almost unlimited resources. My best ideas ALWAYS were ones when I had fewer resources. Too much choice, breeds too much consideration, leading to mediocre consensus driven ideas. As a corporate EIR (Entrepreneur in Residence) I have seen hundreds of innovations struggle through the morass of over-abundance. Too many people with too many opinions spending too much money trying to alleviate too many fears. My advice is always simple. Try something new. Have a small team innovate with limited capital and a hard deadline. You might just be surprised scarcity unlocks innovation.

As an aside: If you would like to learn more about the Hippo Roller and the amazing team behind it click here.

Mike Stemple CEO & Founder, Inspirer On Linkedin