Working definition. A bottleneck is the point where demand exceeds effective capacity and the movement of the whole system is restricted.
Inherited meaning
The image comes from a bottle: a large body can release its contents only through a narrow neck. Engineering, logistics, computing, and organisational theory use the metaphor for a local limitation whose effects propagate through everything downstream.
Meaning in the imagination economy
For creative and knowledge work, execution was long the bottleneck because skilled production was slow and expensive. Generative AI widened that passage. The new narrowing appears upstream: forming a worthwhile intention, specifying it clearly, comparing abundant candidates, and recognising what should be made. A bottleneck names the visible obstruction; the binding constraint names the one currently determining total performance.
What changes in practice
Locate where work actually waits, accumulates, or returns for revision. Then ask whether improving that point would change the final outcome. Do not add generation capacity when the queue is made of undecided choices.