Outside The BoxThinking "outside
box" or as it is sometimes called, "coloring outside lines" is a popular idea in business world today. People and organizations are told to think outside box or color outside lines as a way to stimulate creativity when they need to solve problems like streamlining production, establishing a new product, or developing a new process. And it's true that creativity and innovation often arise from unexpected and unconventional thinking.
But there is a serious problem with trying to apply such thinking too broadly.
For instance, creativity is valued in art and advertising, but not in banking and accounting. An accounting firm recently ran an ad suggesting that it could think "outside box." Do you really want your business to be associated with creative accounting? Aren't accountants supposed to put numbers in right box? Wasn't creative accounting a serious problem for Enron?
In reality, clear thinking and creativity that it produces are rarely a matter of thinking outside box. And coloring outside lines is for most part just sloppy workmanship. The art of clear thinking is a matter of putting thoughts in to right boxes or categories. Clear thinking is a matter of mental organization. Conversely, sloppy thinking involves confusion of categories, of putting ideas into wrong boxes or not putting them in order at all. Is a child who will not straighten his or her room creative or just sloppy? There is a significant difference. While creativity sometimes looks sloppy to an outside observer, it does not issue from sloppiness.
Picasso was a creative artist.
But his creativity was not a matter of art he produced. In reality his abstract work is technically sloppy. It looks like work of a child. Picasso could sell his abstract art only because he had previously established himself as an artist who could color inside lines very well. Had he not first proven his artistic talent in traditional way, his abstract art would have been worth much less. He used his reputation as a traditional artist to establish a new direction in art. He didn't so much color outside box, as he expanded boundaries and definition of box. But point is that his abstract creations were valuable only because of his proven abilities in traditional arts.
Contrast my own efforts to establish myself as an abstract artist. My art has gone unnoticed because I have not been able to prove myself as a traditional artist. Not that I actually tried to do so, but I am using myself as an example to make point. The creativity of a novel idea requires discipline of order and structure to be valuable. Picasso's art is valuable because he was an accomplished painter who intentionally colored outside lines. My art is not valuable because I am not an accomplished painter and I accidentally color outside lines. While two products may look similar, difference is critical.
