A Special Issue of Creativity and Innovation Management Organizing Creativity: Creativity and Innovation under Constraints Guest edited by: Marjolein C.J. Caniëls, Open University of the Netherlands, The Netherlands Eric F. Rietzschel, Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, The Netherlands Background T oday’s dynamic business environment requires firms to constantly adapt in order to survive.As a result of continuously changing demands, organizations have to adjust and reorientate, innovate, and adopt new technologies. Creative ideas are at the root of invention and innovation (Woodman, Sawyer & Griffen, 1993;Amabile et al., 1996). Hence, leaders and managers espouse creativity as an important goal that must be nurtured and facilitated (Mueller, Melwani & Goncalo 2012). Nevertheless, organizing creativity in organizations remains somewhat enigmatic to schol- ars. Creative organizations are often associated with spaces characterized by freedom, autonomy, weak rules and few boundaries. For example, this is reflected in Google’s workplace design, with the office as a playground in which self-expression is encouraged. However, most organizational actors still have to operate within the constraints and boundaries imposed by the organization. These constraints can easily be experienced as hampering the freedom and creativity of employees. Then again, constraints can also be perceived as challenging. They might entice employees to find a creative new way of circumventing obstacles and dealing with organizational impediments. For example, in an interview with Fast Company, one of Google’s top managers states that ‘engineers thrive on constraints. They love to think their way out of that little box: “We know you said it was impossible, but we’re going to do this, this, and that to get us there” ’ (Salter, 2008). This paradoxical role of constraints for creativity (hampering versus enticing) calls for further elaboration and more research. Several promising avenues of study can be identified. • Firstly, more research is needed that refines our understanding of what constraints are, and how they affect creative behavior. Behavioural psychologists suggest that creative imagination seems to work best when one is confronted with explicitly understood constraints (Kamoche & Pina e Cunha, 2001; Kelly & Leggo, 2008). Studies in this line mainly refer to mental constraints, i.e. artificial constraints adopted as scaffolding to generate creativity. The workplace might pose constraints of a different nature, i.e. more practically oriented, such as workload pressure, budget limitations, or demands from other stakeholders inside and outside of the organization. Does the specific nature of constraints impact their effect on creativity? Do we need to distinguish between different types of constraints? • Secondly, more research is needed that explores the nature of the creative process itself. Existing studies typically regard creativity as an output variable, and do not take into account that creativity encompasses a process from initial idea to creative outcome. Several studies have shown that creativity can be viewed as a multistage process. Little is known about whether and how constraints differentially impact the various stages of the creative 100 CREATIVITY AND INNOVATION MANAGEMENT Volume 22 Number 1 2013 10.1111/caim.12010 © 2013 Blackwell Publishing Ltd