oday’sdynamicbusinessenvironmentrequiresfirmstoconstantlyadaptinordertosurvive.Asa 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 espousecreativity as an important goal that must be nurtured and facilitated (Mueller, Melwani & Goncalo2012). 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, withthe office as a playground in which self-expression is encouraged. However, most organizationalactors still have to operate within the constraints and boundaries imposed by the organization.Theseconstraintscaneasilybeexperiencedashamperingthefreedomandcreativityofemployees.Then again, constraints can also be perceived as challenging. They might entice employees to finda creative new way of circumventing obstacles and dealing with organizational impediments. Forexample, in an interview with Fast Company, one of Google’s top managers states that ‘engineersthrive on constraints. They love to think their way out of that little box: “We know you said it wasimpossible, 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 furtherelaboration 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 howthey affect creative behavior. Behavioural psychologists suggest that creative imagination seemsto work best when one is confronted with explicitly understood constraints (Kamoche & Pina eCunha, 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 poseconstraintsofadifferentnature,i.e.morepracticallyoriented,suchasworkloadpressure,budgetlimitations,ordemandsfromotherstakeholdersinsideandoutsideoftheorganization.Doesthespecificnatureofconstraintsimpacttheireffectoncreativity?Doweneedtodistinguishbetweendifferent 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 intoaccount that creativity encompasses a process from initial idea to creative outcome. Severalstudies have shown that creativity can be viewed as a multistage process. Little is knownabout whether and how constraints differentially impact the various stages of the creative