THINK INSIDE THE BOX means to innovate within the constraints defined by the box. It's a 'constraint-based innovation' and the idea behind it is to understand your constraints and utilize them to innovate beyond the box. The box can be an Organization, Government, Startup, or a Team. And as you make progress those constraints can change over time.

The BOX is the starting point.

It’s a solid place to start a journey. If you want to accomplish something, you need to start with clear thinking. And that starts with constructing the box that describes your mission.

Unleash Creativity

> Power Of Constraints Unlock Creativity.
> Creativity Drives Innovation.
> Innovation Accelerates Design.
> Design Connects The Dots.

Think Inside The Box is to constrain the problem but not the potential ways of solving it. Constraint-based innovation is very impactful and can empower a team to create something UNCOMMON.

Based on many corporate surveys, the C-Levels, rate the importance of innovation for their institution very high. However, the same leaders give a relatively very low rating of satisfaction with innovation.

Why open ‘Brainstorming’ for idea generation is a lost cause?

About 15-20 people are put in a conference room. Some of them are chosen for political reasons, few are there because they don't have a choice and others are there as mere spectators. The big elephant in the room is either their ‘boss’, whose presence makes some people reluctant to offer what may be perceived as a silly idea, or a ‘brainstorming facilitator’ who neither understands the business nor thinks he should have to. In most of the scenarios, 3-4 people dominate the session — either becoz of them trying to influence the big elephant or are strongly opinionated and perceive themselves as the stronghold of the organization. And then we have others who are silent observers. Here, either participants go wild and think (dream) outside the box or they slice and dice the old boxes ... but no new fresh ideas.

And the Conclusion — “there are no bad ideas” (which only compounds confusion) ... preposterous dreams consume much of the time and energy.

Finally, the Outcome — either the participants don't produce anything or do not follow-up on anything the brainstorming session created.

Now, all these issues can be avoided, if you take the time, in-advance to the ideation session, to define the constituents and constraints of what we want to achieve and provide some relevant guidance ... And this can be accomplished by —> ASKING THE RIGHT QUESTIONS.

Asking the right questions help establish the right constraints — ones that create boxes that are useful, but different, from the boxes people currently think-in. These boxes (boundaries/constraints) in-turn help people with focused thinking and prevent them from straying.

One key question that can generate insights in any business is:

“What is the biggest hassle about using or buying a certain product or service that people unnecessarily tolerate without knowing it?”

Eliminating such hassles helped many entrepreneurs to focus on solving very common problems — Oil Changes at Jiffy Lube, Used Car Warranties at CarMax, Prepaid Cell Phones, Single Use Items such as Razors and many more.

What matters is to ask "Questions" that have the potential to uncover the kind of extraordinary innovations like Amazon, Google, eBay, and PayPal.

“What question would have caused me to see this opportunity first?” — In other words, “reverse engineer” every great idea or innovation you see.

Think Inside The Box does NOT mean to constraint the thinking of people but to better orchestrate the process.

Now let's see "Asking the Right Questions" in practice:

Question: What do Rollerblades, Häagen-Dazs ice cream, Spider-Man movies, Bowling alley/Wall climbing corporate events and Space tourism have in common?

Answer: They are all based on the same underlying concept — the business idea has taken something that was emotionally powerful for children and what they love; and it was reproduced in a form that is more expensive but for adults.

People are at their most creative self when they focus on the internal aspects of a situation or problem at hand — and when they constrain their options rather than broaden them. By defining and then closing the boundaries of a particular creative problem, most of us can be more consistently creative — and certainly more productive. The most consequential ideas are often right under our noses, connected in some way to our current reality or view of the world.

The common misconception about creativity is that it often occurs as a sort of lightning strike, a eureka moment, that is magically generated in the minds of genius entrepreneurs. But in fact, creativity is like most other things, the more creative you want to be, the harder work you need to put in.

“It takes an age to prepare my impromptu remarks.”

— Winston Churchill

Innovation works best when we utilize an exceptional and uncommon way of creative thinking, when we challenge the existing norm, assumptions and develop new approaches, when we THINK DIFFERENTLY. Innovation is a thinking activity ... key is how can we manage our thinking, so it is understandable, reliable and repeatable.

Framing a successful thinking process requires to address all possibilities that you already control or can potentially control. Think Inside The Box encourages to focus and work methodologically leveraging the resources you already have, iteratively and carefully turning every hurdle to effectively generate a EUREKA MOMENT. This approach not only maximizes your current potential, but also helps systemize your ideation process so that it’s more robust as well as measurable and repeatable, as opposed to leaving to chance.

Think Inside The Box approach to innovation was first described in 1992 by the psychologist Ronald Finke. He discovered that people are actually better at searching for benefits for given configurations (starting with a solution) than at finding the best configuration for a given benefit (starting with the problem).

Imagine a baby bottle and being told that it changes color as the temperature of the milk changes. Why would that be useful? Because it would help to make sure that you don't burn the baby with milk that is too hot. Now imagine you were asked the opposite question: How can we make sure not to burn a baby's mouth with milk that is too hot? How long would it take you to come up with a color-changing milk bottle? You might never arrive at the idea.

The list below provides 5 "Think Inside The Box" techniques, that takes a product, service or process and breaks it into components or attributes.

These techniques are adapted from "Inside the Box: A Proven System of Creativity for Breakthrough Results". Using any one or all of these "inside the box" techniques, innovators can manipulate and reorder the components to generate new-world valuable ideas.

SUBTRACTION —> When Less Becomes More ... Remove seemingly essential elements.
Innovative products and services often have had something removed, usually something that was previously thought to be essential to the product or service.
Discount airlines subtracted the frills. Removing the ear covers from traditional headphones gave us “ear buds” placed inside one’s ear. Consider a contact lens, an exercise bike, and an ATM ... They have all had something subtracted — subtracting the frame, removing the bike's rear wheel, and taking a bank teller out of bank transactions.
TASK UNIFICATION —> New Tricks For Old Dogs ... Bring together unrelated functions.
With some creative products and services, certain tasks have been brought together and unified within one component of the product or service — usually a component that was previously thought to be unrelated to that task.
When Apple CEO Steve Jobs unveiled the iPhone in January 2007, many observers said that the mobile device landscape changed forever. The iPhone combined 3 products — a mobile phone, a widescreen iPod with touch controls, and an Internet communications device — into a single handheld device.
MULTIPLICATION —> Be Fruitful ... Copy the component and then alter it.
With this technique, a component has been copied but changed in some way, usually in a way that initially seemed unnecessary or odd.
Since the bronze age, men have been shaving using a single blade. In 1971, Gillette introduced a twin blade razor delivering a close and a smoother shave.
DIVISION —> Divide and Conquer ... Separate the components of a product or service and rearrange them.
Many creative products and services have had a component divided out of them and placed somewhere else in the usage situation, usually in a way that initially seemed unproductive or unworkable.
TV, DVD or Satellite Box that use remote controls deliver more convenience thanks to the “Division” pattern. Exercise dumbbells allow you to regulate the right amount of weight to build muscle mass. Computer printers allow you to separate the ink cartridge for easy replacement.
ATTRIBUTE DEPENDENCY —> Clever Correlations ... Make the attributes of a product change in response to changes in another attribute or in the surrounding environment.
The Attribute Dependency asks you to take two attributes (or characteristics) that were previously independent of each other and make them dependent in a meaningful way.
Smartphones provide information about restaurants, locations of nearby places, and shopping preferences depending on your location (a variable 'geolocation'). Another excellent example of this technique is windshield wipers that speed up as it rains harder and headlights that dim automatically for oncoming traffic. Both work by making one variable dependent on another.

Creativity is rarely achieved by wildly divergent thinking. Using "inside the box" innovation techniques involves retraining the way your brain thinks about “problem solving”. Most people think innovation starts with establishing a well-defined problem and then thinking of solutions. Think Inside The Box takes an abstract, conceptual solution and find a problem that it can solve.

It's not to say that THINK OUTSIDE THE BOX is not relevant but it has its place.

Stretch Out

Think Outside After Connecting The Dots Inside.

Think Outside The Box is unstructured and doesn't follow set rules or patterns. It can be an effective strategy in scenarios where the teams need to draw in new ideas that aren’t related to the current ideas, product, or service. But it’s only effective if there are already clear parameters in mind and a goal that the team or institution is working towards.

And for that, you need a BOX. You need a square in which to begin.

FUN FACT!

Designed by architect Sacha Sosno, La Tête Carrée, is a square head and literally translates to “thinking inside the box”.

This square head building houses Nice Central Library (France).

At a staggering height of 30 m and 14 m broad monumental work, the massive cube-shaped sculpture, actually houses three floors of books in a perfect melding of art and education.