Rethinking the Box – Part One

By David Morstad 

It happened again. We had a problem, and someone encouraged us to think outside the box. The box – the quintessential metaphor for perceived limits on the way we think and act when presented with a problem. Presumably, those limits keep us from adequately addressing increasingly complex problems and, so I’m told, we need to get out of it.

 As a metaphor, “thinking outside the box” is – after years– still very much embraced. Truthfully, I’m a little weary of it. I’m also a little wary of it. Weary, because it’s cliché; but wary because it has never adequately described the problem solving process. In fact, when it comes to how we conceptualize creative thinking, it may have done more harm than good.

 

Some important things inside the box

This box of ours, the one that gets all the criticism, does have one critically important attribute that deserves our consideration. That problem we’re all trying to solve? It lives in there. Inside the box.

The box is not something we intentionally create. In a sense, it creates itself. When we consider a problem, we look at the factors that define it. Take the case of a person who exhibits behavior that is interfering with overall quality of life. We consider what that behavior looks like, when it happens, where it happens, and what else is going on as it happens. We also know the history of trying to help a person deal with it (i.e., what’s worked and what hasn’t). The elements that compel our thinking along typical and predictable lines include things like our experience, known patterns, and observed outcomes. In other words, the “box” is formed, at least to some extent, by our own expertise. And that’s not a bad thing. I contend that the metaphor itself is inadequate. It’s fine to go wandering outside of the box, but it’s time to start being clearer about the purpose for doing so.

 

Bach’s Box

Consider an example clearly outside our own field. Was J.S. Bach a creative guy? Absolutely. He made his living writing things like sonatas and fugues – arguably the most rule-oriented and defined art form in all of music history. Anything that doesn’t follow the rules of a fugue (and there are a lot of rules), simply isn’t a fugue. Make no mistake. That’s a box. And some of the most beautiful and expressive artistry in the history of music came from someone who loved working inside of it. Did Bach ever venture outside that box? You bet. In fact, he allowed himself to be influenced by the music of the French and the Italians (who had nothing to do with the forms Bach worked in). Putting together seemingly unrelated things in beneficial ways is a key component of innovation.

It turns out that bringing something new into the box redefines what the box looks like. It’s not hard to find an example from our own world. Remember how we used to determine learning objectives for people with disabilities? We completed assessments that showed us everything people were bad at (or didn’t like doing), then we designed programs that made them practice those very things over and over again. All. Day. Long. It was a lousy way to do things. Then, we looked outside of our special ed./human services system and wondered: What if we look at people’s skills, interests and dreams and design teaching programs to help them achieve those? We brought something different into our box and it changed everything. What happened to the skill deficits we used to build programs on? They’re still here in the box, but now we have a new relationship with them.

 

Perhaps the summary looks like this:

1) The box = a problem and everything we know about solving it. Most of the time, it works just fine.

 2) When our solutions no longer fit the problem, we need new information and ideas.

 3) At first, all new ideas appear unrelated to our problem.

 4) Discovery of the operational advantage these unrelated ideas bring us creates a new and better box.

 5) New and better box = Innovation.

There are all kinds of good ideas outside of the box, but they’re worthless to us if we don’t find a way to get them inside the box. That’s when the real work begins.

 (Continue reading: Rethinking the Box- Part 2)