What Does “Think Outside of the Box” Mean?
And, How Do You Go About Doing It?
Among the most well-worn phrases in the business world is “thinking outside the box”. It is supposed to mean thinking creatively, freely, and off the beaten path. It’s the kind of thinking that — in an age of increasingly powerful algorithms and neural networks — garners significant attention. For now, it’s the kind of stuff that machines can’t do that well.
One supposed story of the term’s origin is actually a great illustration (literally) of what this kind of thinking is, and why it’s so sought-after. As the story goes, management consulting groups in the 1960s and 70s began using a particular puzzle called the “nine dots puzzle” from a 1914 book by Sam Lloyd called the Cyclopedia of Puzzles. They would present the diagram below, with the following instructions:
Link all 9 dots using four straight lines or fewer, without lifting the pen and without tracing the same line more than once.
The most oft-cited solution appears below. It uses only 4 lines.
See where “outside the box” comes from? There was no directive given about staying within a…
