In Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert Pirsig shares a story about a student struggling to write an essay. Her assignment was to describe her town, but she found herself completely stuck, unable to start. The task was too broad, too overwhelming. In response, her teacher advised her to narrow her focus—first to the main street of the town, then to a single building on that street. Still stuck, the teacher finally instructed her to write about just one brick on that building. It was only when the student focused on that one brick that her mind began to unlock. By zooming in on something so small and specific, she was able to write, and her creativity flowed freely.

This story captures a powerful truth about creativity: it doesn’t come from thinking bigger. In fact, broad, vague thinking can often stall creativity, as the student experienced. Instead, creativity comes alive when we narrow our focus to something concrete and specific. The more detailed and defined the problem or object we’re engaging with, the more deeply our minds can explore, and that’s where real innovation happens.

This principle is at the heart of creativity in problem-solving. The limits of our creativity are the contents of our brain, or, in the case of a team, the collective brain. But to fully engage that creative power, we need specificity. Vague, open-ended questions tend to scatter our thinking, while narrow, concrete challenges direct it toward deeper, more meaningful solutions. 

This is where *Brainsteering* by Kevin and Shawn Coyne comes in. In their work, they emphasize that traditional brainstorming often fails because it lacks focus. People are asked to think broadly—"What new products should we create?" or "How can we innovate?"—and while this may generate a few interesting ideas, the sheer openness of the question usually leads to scattered or impractical results. *Brainsteering* turns this approach on its head by asking very specific, targeted questions designed to guide creative thinking into areas most likely to produce valuable insights.

For instance, rather than asking a team, “What new products can we create?” a more focused question would be, “How can we adapt our current products to serve a new customer segment?” This simple shift in framing narrows the scope and encourages deeper thinking. The team is no longer brainstorming in a vacuum; they’re working within defined constraints, and those constraints actually fuel more creative and innovative solutions. 

Similarly, broad questions like “How can we grow our business?” might overwhelm a team, but breaking that down into smaller, more concrete questions—such as “How can we increase customer loyalty within our top 10 clients?” or “How can we reduce delivery time by 20%?”—narrows the problem into specific, actionable areas. This focused approach forces the team to engage more deeply with the problem, leading to practical, innovative solutions that wouldn’t arise from vague brainstorming.

The underlying logic here is clear: creativity thrives within constraints. The more specific the challenge, the more room there is to explore and innovate within that space. Just as the student in Pirsig’s story unlocked her creativity by focusing on a single brick, modern problem-solvers can do the same by narrowing their focus to the precise problem at hand.

In the end, creativity is about making connections and configuring things in new ways. But it’s not about thinking bigger—it’s about thinking deeper. When we focus on the specifics, we unleash the full potential of our creative minds. By zooming in, whether on a brick or a narrow business problem, we discover new ways to innovate, and that’s the true power of creativity.