Thinking outside the box. What box?
Ah, the box.
Over the past thirty years, management and creative consultants want you to think out of it.
Much like the light bulb metaphor, it’s an idea that has become so clichéd, it has become the creative equivalent of a dial tone.
The origin of the phrase is a bit murky. One writer found a citation in 1975 in Aviation Week & Space Technology. “ We must step back and see if the solutions to our problems lie outside the box."
I first learned the phrase in 1974 when a professor at Rutgers gave us the 9-dots puzzle. The puzzle itself has become a cliché because nearly every book on creativity uses it to illustrate the invisible boundaries that most of us assume are there.
(The challenge is to connect the dots by drawing four straight, continuous lines that pass through each of the dots while never lifting the pencil or pen from the paper.)
The solution was (and still is for some people) a jarring revelation. The puzzle shows just how unconsciously our thinking is filled with boundaries.
Now a few words from the other side.
The Antonym Lens. Ernie Schenk, the great creative director and writer, has written a terrific book called The Houdini Solution. Put Creativity and Innovation to Work by Thinking Inside the Box. He opens with a quotation from Michelangelo, “Art lives on constraint and dies of freedom.”
His technique, “The Antonym Lens” is about looking at the opposite of an idea and using that opposite as a catalyst for ideas. So his book is really his use of the technique to make the “box” or the imposed constraints of a creative challenge.
There are budget boxes. There are media boxes. There are brand boxes. (A company like Disney can be innovative in many ways, but the brand is always family friendly.) There are client boxes. (Some are risk takers and some are conservative). And, of course, there is a boss box.
Okay, so what?
Truth is, our mind is not in the box. The box is in our mind.
I learned this lesson from another great creative director, Nick Souter.
What companies like Inotivity, Solution People and Seriously Creative in Puerto Rico do -- is to help you identify both conscious and unconscious barriers (boxes) to developing new ideas or solutions to problems.
I don’t think you can really think out of the box, unless you create a model of what that box looks like for you or your company.
Take a mental picture of this box? What does it look like? Feel like? Does it have dimension? Is it a box or a sphere? Nick sees the box as 6-sided – each side a common barrier to creative thinking.
Fear. Knowledge. Habit. Rules. Assumption. And Complacency.
Challenge: Get a notebook, label it “our box” and start drawing your box. (Not all boxes are bad, but some may be limiting your success.)
If you email me at Inotivity@gmail.com I will send you a free question bank to help you define your box.
Notes and annotations.
A case lesson: Blockbuster.
Is the video giant doomed to go the way of Circuit City or Linen’s and Things?
Massive layoffs are in the cards at Blockbuster as revenue slid nearly 6% in the 3rd quarter and 526 stores have been closed last year. Growing consumer familiarity with Netflix and its streaming films have proven to much for the video store icon. CEO Jim Keyes has admitted that the focus on Netflix has damaged the company.
"While we believe that...we will be in a position to close on the amended credit facility on or about May 11, 2009, there can be no assurance regarding these matters," the filing said. "The risk that we may not successfully complete this refinancing...raises substantial doubt about our ability to continue as a going concern." Report by Gina Keating. © Thomson Reuters 2009.
The reasons for Blockbuster’s downfall are many but one was a failure of imagination. They didn’t understand their box. They were committed to brick and mortar buildings and an in-store rental model.
Then came Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph, both veteran new technology entrepreneurs, with an idea called Netflix. The company would rent and sell DVDs over the Internet. Hastings, who supplied the firm's startup cash of $2.5 million, had reportedly hit upon the idea for rental-by-mail when he was forced to pay $40 in fines after returning an overdue videotape of the film Apollo 13.
The question that a creative consultant would ask isn’t how might be rent or sell more videos in store? But in what other ways might we deliver videos/or DVDs to our customers?
A simple rewording of the question. But imagine the possibilities. Blockbuster’s box was a commitment to their current prevailing business model, but not to the future or distruptive technology like broadband or even the US mail. Now Netflix has to define and imagine beyond their box.
Creativity Central
10 Comments
Reader Comments (10)
I'd direct you to Tom Monahan's (see blog link) book (D.I.Y. Lobotomy).In it he makes the point that all the knowledge we possess constitutes our box. We can fill this box with many smaller boxes of discrete areas of knowledge e.g. golf, cars, books. If an element for a new idea doesn't exist in a box we own then we can't use it. Our failure in imagining new ideas is a result of not accessing the correct boxes or indeed not learning new things (new boxes).
So it isn't so much a matter of thinking outside a box but rather thinking between boxes that help us to come up with fresh ideas. Of course all this is hindered by the factors you mention in the cube discussed in your post.
You know that "Think outside the box" has become a cliche when Taco Bell has "Think outside the bun" and Penn State's College of Agriculture has "Think outside the barn." That said, innovation--whether on the inside or outside--is no longer optional. Companies must reinvent or they will die.
Absolutely Bill. Harry Beckwith, who is a great source of ideas, talks about the wear out factor with such things as mission and vision statements. He says yes, they help guide and organization but rename them. Even Catbert has a mission statement planner.
marty baker wrote:
"I don’t think you can think out of the box, unless you create a model of what that box looks like for your company."
i disagree.
figuring out your own "box" is without doubt a valuable exercise, but i don't consider it to be essential.
in fact, that's what all those creativity techniques (at least, the good ones) are designed to do: to push you outside your personal box.
if, for example, i ask myself
- "what would <X> do in my situation?"
and substitute anyone from "IBM" to "darth vader" for <X>, then i am already thinking outside the box.
assumption reversals dissolve the box directly by asking questions like
- "what if our university had no professors?"
- "what if we paid our students for passing exams?"
a large part of the art of scriptwriting an idea factory (which is what we do for a living) consists of finding questions such as these which help our clients jump right out of their boxes - preferably without any preparation at all.
best regards
graham horton
zephram (magdeburg, germany)
Dear Graham:
Great thoughts. But I will take your disgreement with a twist.
You are thinking about facilitated idea generation. This is what my company does as well.
But in many organizations, the concept of thinking out of the box can take a variety of forms. Some companies have a group think -- (Senge 5th Disclipline) so they are not aware of hidden bias and barriers.
So, I agree that people can jump in without seeing the box but in general practice, I think understanding the bias and barriers can lead to better thinking without a trained facilitator.
Thanks
Marty
Dear Idea Hunter:
I know Tom personally and I love his book. Great comment. What is interesting is that Tom, Ernie Schenk, and I have all been creative directors at advertising agencies. So we grapple every day with developing, evaluating and selling solutions to marketing/branding challenges.
So, when ideas are being developed we work within the "box" (a creative/strategy brief and client budget/needs and have a keen awareness of what's already been done by the client competition the general zeitgeist of of the advertising/media world.
In Ernie's book he even mentions how boxed in so many advertising agencies are. We don't typically use the term "out of the box thinking." We just collaborate and sell ideas to each other. What's interesting, what's novel, what's going to answer the client's problem.
Some agencies are better at it than others. You mentioned accessing the right boxes or making new connections. That's what Tom taught in his Creative Bootcamp and what I do at Inotivity.
Ultimately, it often comes down to asking smarter questions. Dana Montenegro, a friend who was the inspiration and culture guru at Red Bull, SA has great tales to tell about "not selling" Red Bull. The great question isn't how do we sell Red Bull the drink, but how might we create a culture around a product? How do we "authentically" grow that culture. That isn't the kind of question that a food manufacturer would have asked when RB was introduced.
Red Bull got out of the usual mindset (box) and connected to a new idea. My thesis isn't so much that you must define your box but that awareness of "thought" barriers may be a catalyst for new solutions.
Thanks
Marty
Dear Martin,
I think that to think outside the box just look in other boxes.
Innovations themselves are combination's of what came before, rather than an original invention.
It's discovering things in other boxes and then combining them in a useful way that you get something new.
I think this coincides with your last response.
Thanks Jorge.
One interesting thing is that we use the language of "box" to describe how we hold information or ideas. What is fascinating to me is just how much language affects our thinking. At Inotivity and Solution People in Chicago -- we use the words "how might" rather than "how can" because might provides little more freedom in creating the idea or riffing off of another idea.
Thanks for reading and commenting.
Marty
One of the greatest creative thinkers of our time is Mike Vance of the Creative Thinking Association. I met Mike 30 years ago when I was at GE and he literally blew everyone away. An incredibly talented and gifted thinker. If you are truly into thinking from a different perspective, I strongly recommend you at least check him out. Anyone who spent that much time with Walt Disney, Buckminster Fuller and others, plus being the former Dean of Disney University deserves to be listened to. I'm confident you'll enjoy him.
Jim
Thanks Jim. I read Mike's Book a few years ago but will return.