What it REALLY Means to Think Outside the Box

Published January 17, 2009 | By Laura

There is some misunderstanding of this concept. Recently I have heard two people condemn the phrase, one calling it “silly”, another calling it “dangerous”. These people will never be innovators or true entrepreneurs, because they have completely missed the point, and changed the meaning from what it really is.

When you think outside the box, it does not mean you do not apply common sense, or that you do not abide by necessary limitations that affect safety or legality.

It simply means that you do not let preconceived ideas, or the “rules” imposed by other people, which do NOT apply, constrain you from thinking creatively.

We do that… We assume that because 90% of people in the US send their kids to public school, and because we have done it that way for generations, that somehow it must be better. We assume that if the SBA teaches people to start a business and tells them that they have to have heaps of money to do it, and that they must have a business plan that conforms to bank requirements in order to get that funding, that this is how it must be done. We think that if we have been taught to do things a certain way, that we must do it that way, even when that way may not make sense for our particular situation.

Innovators and true entrepreneurs are not held back by limitations that do NOT affect safety or legality. They are able to see beyond the preconceived ideas and methods that others are constrained by.

In the web world, things are done on an enterprise scale, and taught for that scale, and nobody ever really stops to think that they simply do not scale well for small business, or how different the needs might be. They assume that you must do this, you must do that, and if you do not, that your website won’t perform. They do not stop to think that on a micro-scale, the things they require won’t make ANY difference at all, but will increase costs, and that perhaps they should be done at a later time when it WILL matter. Our “out of the box” thinking was to simply analyze those factors, and make decisions based on reality instead of assumption or dogma.

That is all it means to Think Outside the Box. To approach things from a new direction, and to consider new ideas in a productive way.

If you intend to go somewhere new, you can’t do it by following other people. You take the wisdom of others and learn from it, then you formulate a new plan that still fits the wisdom, but which does not incorporate the ideas that do not apply just because everyone else does it that way. If you want to LEAD, you have to get out ahead and try something nobody else is doing. If you want to succeed at it, you cannot compromise known safety or legality factors, the things you risk are just yourself.

It isn’t silly, and it isn’t dangerous. It is bold, and the path to true success.

Posted in Business, Recession Survival

2 Responses to What it REALLY Means to Think Outside the Box

Mitchell Allen says:

January 17, 2009 at 11:57 pm

While I agree with you about the definition, I believe that there is one ironic thing about creative thinking:

it has become its own box.

Consider problem X. If the solution, Y, is non-trivial, it may require one of three approaches in order to be reached.
1. Brute-force
2. Analytical
3. Creative

I think it is important to at least consider brute force, which does not necessarily mean that every known path must be examined. In fact, brute force can be elegantly simple. I can email a dozen colleagues, asking them if they know how to solve problem X. Henry Ford was good at this type of brute-force problem solving.

Another type of brute-force attack on a problem is to eliminate it! This sounds flippant but, suppose the problem involved physical or chemical properties. Eliminating the offending element may solve the problem. This is exactly what happened with the vacuum tubes used in MIT’s Whirlwind computer in the 1950s.

Sometimes, brute force can be ruled out by analyzing the the scope of the decision tree for a problem. If problem X has three or more independent variables, analysis may be better suited as an approach for reaching a solution.

It is during the analysis of the problem that creative thinking asserts itself. That’s because analysis is structured (or should be!) and the creative brain readily sees patterns within that structure.

Because of the ease in which the patterns are discerned, unwary thinkers may delude themselves into perceiving a sense of progress along an uncertain path. Patterns are subjective. It may be possible to quantify the creative process, but such capability does not automatically confer a de facto secret path from problem X to solution Y.

The only danger that I see is that, when confronted with a complex problem, we may automatically choose to think creatively – at the expense of fully understanding what it is we are attempting to solve. We may do this because we “accept” that innovations derive from this type of thinking. In so doing, we risk re-inventing the wheel if, indeed, problem X has already been solved by someone else.

Cheers,

Mitch
Laura says:

January 19, 2009 at 7:58 am

I don’t think creative thinking precludes analysis. In fact, I think that creative thinking is pretty well useless unless it builds on analysis and utilizes other solutions FIRST. It is more of a matter of taking the problem solving process one step further, and examining more options within the analytical problem.

So out of the box thinking might mean using brute force to solve a problem, in a way no one else thought possible, or it might mean reaching conclusions about possible courses of action from the analysis that others did not consider.

Laura