Think outside the box. Great, I’ve heard that before a ton.
Let’s come up with a crazy idea and go with it… right? Nope.
Constructive creative thinking achieves workable, inspiring solutions. Truly remarkable ideas are also not something mystical or limited to certain individuals who have some genius or creative gift beyond the reach of you and me. This article may help demystify creative thinking, but it will require you to drop logic and allow some seemingly ‘silly’ initial thoughts to arise.
The ‘box’ is the set of restrictions posed upon our thinking by how things have always been done or what people have come to expect. This can be due to tradition, regulation, trend, status quo, industry standards, accepted social norms, best practices, and logic. Ultimately the ‘box’ is what other people say or have said is acceptable or how it should be.
We often miss that we’re allowed to question things taken for granted. I don’t mean destructively for the sake of breaking something down for any other motive than looking at it differently to discover something new and positive. This process is something Edward de Bono referred to as Lateral Thinking.
When we identify these restrictions in our thinking, we need to think outside of them. To think outside of them, we need our minds to go away from the logical pattern associated with it without bias. This is achieved by setting a Provocation, which provokes a different train of thought. De Bono suggests several practical techniques to manipulate a statement that everyone accepts as the norm concerning a particular topic, namely.
- escaping it,
- reversing it,
- exaggerating it,
- applying wishful thinking to it,
- or distorting it.
Thinking outside the box is not some wild brainstorming session but deliberately thinking outside of current restrictions. The first step is to define what problem we want to find a solution to and then note everything that’s taken for granted or what we might consider common knowledge.
Thinking outside the box is not some wild brainstorming session but deliberately thinking outside of current restrictions.
Here’s an example of setting some provocations and how they would spark new or ‘out the box’ ideas:
The challenge: You’ve always wanted to make awesome T-shirts and sell them, but the market is flooded, and large production houses will outprice you. You need an idea that can allow you to make great shirts for a market segment who’ll value them for their difference compared with the majority of shirts out there.
Take what we know about T-Shirts:
- You wear them
- They have designs on them
- They come in different colours
- They are made from cotton
For the sake of time, we’ll use just these four, but it’s good to compile a decent list when doing this for a real-life challenge.
In this example, I will only apply two provocation setting methods, escape and reverse, to each of these statements. When you do this, you create a new statement that forces your mind away from what is the norm – a provocation. Here goes:
- You wear T-shirts – Escape: You don’t wear T-shirts / Reverse: T-shirts wear you
- T-shirts have designs on them – Escape: They have no designs on them / Reverse: Designs have T-shirts on them
- T-shirts come in different colours – Escape: T-shirts don’t come in different colours / Colours come in T-Shirts
- They are made from cotton – Escape: They are not made from cotton / Reverse: Cotton is made from T-shirts
You then take each of these new statements or provocations and consider them in various ways. One way is to envisage them playing out in reality and ask, now what? Or if this is true, then what? Here are the examples:
- You don’t wear T-shirts – so what do you do with them? Imagine a T-shirt you buy but don’t wear…
- T-shirts wear you – What would a T-shirt that wears a person look like?
- Initial ideas: People can send in a photo of themselves or someone they know to have it included in the design. This line of thought can be pushed very far. For a start, create Avatars or cartoon-style versions of them, and their social handles and mantras could be added to the design.
- They have no designs on them – so what do they have on them?
- Initial Ideas: Nothing; they are sent with a set of fabric markers or fabric paint and stencils. It could even be a tie-dye kit. Or they have stains (printed) on them, like bird pooh on the shoulder.
- Designs have T-shirts on them – What design could have T-shirts on it?
- Initial ideas: This one can open up ideas on several levels… a design is sent under a pack of shirts with a spray can for the customer to apply the design themselves. Or, companies can sponsor a T-shirt placed on existing public designs or statues to raise awareness for a cause they support. Or, corporate team building game packs can be developed where the shirts cover designs or symbols people need to memorise or match to claim the shirt as an ice-breaker exercise.
- T-shirts don’t come in different colours – So then what colour are they?
- Initial ideas: You receive a colour kit with the shirt that allows you to mix your own colours and dye them. Or, they come in one colour only, and that colour you associate with a message or movement, i.e. bright yellow and it means ‘I am positive about the future of AI’ and you build a social media hype around it.
- Colours come in T-Shirts – How would this work?
- Initial ideas: The shirts require a chemical reaction to reveal their colour; even a simple soak in water suddenly or gradually reveals the colour, and possibly a surprise design.
- They are not made from cotton – Then, what are they made from?
- Initial ideas: Well, enter earth-friendly ideas, or this allows us to push the boundaries entirely, from wear-once recyclable event shirts to being made from materials no associated with T-shirts, perhaps from other repurposed 2nd-hand clothing, or upholstery – just give it a great story to back it:) Or, here’s a wild one to explore: Tea-shirts.
- Cotton is made from T-shirts – Well, this is impossible, right? Yes but what other items are made from cotton that can then be made from T-shirts?
- Initial ideas: When people buy a shirt from you, they can return their old one they also bought from you; their old shirt is repurposed and used together with others to make items like blankets or home decor pieces made and sold as a part of community upliftment.
Do you see the potential of properly thinking outside the box? Imagine if you wrote down more ‘norms’ and then used the other provocation setting techniques as well, plus pushed each one further than in the examples by asking more questions of each. Would you not arrive at one, if not many testable ‘out the box’ ideas?
Testing ‘Out the box ideas’
Good ideas can seem crazy at first. But not all crazy ideas are good ones. Ideas need to be tested once arrived at. So thinking ‘outside the box’ or ‘laterally’ does not mean jumping at any seemingly good idea just because it rebels or provides an initial new perspective.
In this process, it is vital to collect the ideas and push the process as far as it remains productive without settling on early thoughts as the final solution. Aristotle says, “It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.” To know how to test ideas, take a look at de Bono’s The 6 Thinking Hats.
The crazy yet ultimately useless ideas need to be sifted out by looking at their potential, practicality and purpose – more about that another in upcoming articles. All ideas that are winning solutions at first will seem absurd because they are away from where logic would have led us. Few knew this as well as Albert Einstein who said, “If at first, the idea is not absurd, then there is no hope for it.” Good ideas excite and energise, and although not achieved logically but rather by challenging logic, once arrived at will always make sense when working back to the initial problem. By this, I mean that when you test them logically after arriving at them, they will seem logical.
It’s why a simple answer is often discovered in a strange manner, but once found, it is simple and completely logical.