There’s an article on Wired.com entitled Design Under Constraint: How Limits Boost Creativity. It cites the economy as a reason to think “inside the box,” maximizing what you can do within the limits of what you have or are given.
I LOVE this concept. I have practically devoted my life to it.
Like Doctor Who’s TARDIS (which, for the uninitiated, is bigger on the inside than on the outside), thinking like MacGyver or the Professor on “Gillgan’s Island” is an exercise in maximizing your limited space and doing the best you have with exactly what you’ve got. Anyone who has served in the US Navy learns very quickly how much two lockers or a coffin rack can hold… if you’re clever.
Whether it’s staying within the lines of a box on a page or making a film on a slim budget, there’s one thing more that these limitations provide: a sense of when to stop. Is there anything more to do? Not right now? Whew… all done! Sure, we may come back again and rearrange everything one last time, but l digress.
Maybe that’s the meaning of life. Why do things have to die? Why does time pass? What are we here for? Perhaps we exist to define the limitations and the rules of reality, and when our understanding can no longer be contained, we push through to the next boundary. After all, if you had all of eternity to fill up an infinite space, what would you do to keep from going insane?
Orignal From: Thinking (Smarter) Inside the Box
Kevin A. Ranson : ThinkingSkull.com 
I’ve thought about this concept back when the scientists came up with ways to utilize the lines of stem cells they had (and were stuck with due to Bush’s constraints) without using them up and being creative with research ’cause they didn’t know how long those constraints would last and they couldn’t just wait them out…..anyway…..wonder where we would be in the research dept. if Bush hadn’t put them in a box and forced them to work with what they had.