It’s that damned Box. Yet again.
You know the one I mean…
The Box we are supposed to think outside of.
The Box, by the way, is not to be confused with The Paper Bag.
You know the one I mean…
The Paper Bag some folks can’t find their way out of even when it has holes in it.
Nor can it be confused with The Paradigm.
You know that one, too…
The Paradigm we sometimes get locked in to.
But back to The Box.
I have often written about it.
Inside The Box.
Out of The Box.
Out of sight of The Box…my favorite.
Think about it – why is The Box so evil?
Is it sentient in its ability to block smart thinking?
Like some 1950’s black-and-white B horror movie…
The Box that strangled the thinking of the world,
Or
The Box that ate my idea…
The truth is, I am guilty of blaming that poor old Box myself.
So guilty, in fact, that I wanted to run from it, leave it alone and empty by the roadside…abandoned and discarded.
Deserted by all and cast off like yesterday’s already forgotten thought.
Then it occurred to me…
What if the problem isn’t The Box?
What if we had maligned the poor thing and the problem was us?
You see, if we had great ideas in The Box, why would we have to leave it for new ones?
Somehow we schlepped The Box this far – it served us well –built our business – helped us evolve – innovate –why forsake it now?
My inspiration was the following:
I’ll be more enthusiastic about encouraging thinking outside the box when there’s evidence of any thinking going on inside it.
- Terry Pratchett
And there you have it.
I think the real problem is that we aren’t covering the basics. We rip the hell out of The Box – do our best to distance ourselves from it and somehow forget what works; what’s important; what makes a real difference. What delivers results.
We get so consumed and wound up with what we perceive as new and amazing that we revile The Box and blame it for all our woes. Yet we twist ourselves into pretzel-like shapes trying to make things work as if we have created the world and not just built a new road or two.
Here is my new take.
Prove to me that you are thinking in The Box before you trumpet what you have discovered outside of it.
This is going to be a difficult year and I guarantee that if you pay attention to that old Box, you will be surprised by what it will do for you…
Poor damned Box!!! Treat it well. It might just be your salvation…
What’s your POV?
Go ahead ‘Think Inside the Box’.
Prevailing innovation wisdom compels us to believe that innovation thrives in environments with constraints.
Starting a new innovation project and want it to succeed?
1. Give it massive political support
2. But only give it a small team and a small amount of financial resources
Give projects lots of money and they’ll spend it de-risking the project instead of pushing the boundaries. Give projects lots of people and they’ll spend most of their time in meetings or possibly even working against each other.
So despite all the space in popular press given to ‘Thinking Outside the Box’, there are just as many supporting points for ‘Thinking Inside the Box’.
Braden Kelley
http://blogginginnovation.com
http://twitter.com/innovate
http://innovationcommunity.ning.com (David Sable and others share their thoughts)
Great concept — guess its true of a lot of things — I always have belived that its easier to be creative on a blank canvas than on one that is partially started — read that to mean — in our business — an environment where you are constrained by someone else’s idea requires a greater degree of creativity.
All this talk about inside the box, outside the box….
The focus should be on the right solution for the task at hand, whether it’s an old tried-and-true solution, or a bespoke solution derived from a moment of inspiration.
Imagine if, every time you went to the doctor, he or she decided he was going to try a new medicine, course of therapy, or technique? you know, he wants to think outside the box.
Would you send your child to a school that kept experimenting with new teaching methods, one right after the other?
There are probably a whole lot of other equally interesting scenarios.
An on-point “inside the box” solution executed flawlessly usually beats a poorly-executed “outside the box” solution done for the sake of being innovative. Of course, an on-strategy outside the box solution done well can revolutionize a way of doing something.
Perhaps you can view inside the box thinking vs. outside the box thinking as playing small ball vs. swinging for the fences each time you go to the plate. You can win the game either way, it’s just a question of which strategy to apply situationally. Sometimes you need to hit it out of the park to win, and sometimes you need to just get ‘em on base one at a time.
I’d imagine that both of them require different, complementary skillsets….
I, like David don’t see anything wrong with the box. It happens to be full of the fundamentals that keep our feet planted firmly on the ground. The only problem, as I see it, is that we need to open the lid and look around a bit.
I like the lid analogy.
Can I steal it?
I think my point is that in or out of the box — its the thinking that counts
So often “thinking outside the box” is just redefining the size of the box.
Real innovation defies explanation or cultivation (i.e. box building). THe best you can do is identify it when it occurs and celebrate it.