Thinking Inside The Box
Posted on September 10, 2004 in web.
The Association for Computing Machinery has a great on-line magazine, Ubiquity, that published an interview with Andrew Hargadon, author of "How Breakthroughs Happen".
Hargadon's thesis is brilliant: Great ideas don't come from thinking outside the box; they come by recognizing good ideas that are already being applied in a different way -- that is, inside some other box. It is not especially helpful to tell someone to "think outside the box." How do they do that? Instead, suggest that they increase the number of boxes they are in and make connections between them. This is both an easier, more practical recommendation to follow and closer to the reality of how innovations are made.