Why Thinking “Outside the Box” Doesn’t Work
‘Think outside the box’ is one of the biggest creativity cliches. The basic idea is that to be creative you need to challenge your own assumptions and look at things from a fresh angle. You need to break out of conventional thinking and take off the blinkers formed by past experience.
But is that really how creativity happens? And will learning to ‘think outside the box’ help you become more creative?
The phrase is generally held to have originated with the classic ‘nine-dot’ creativity puzzle. If you haven’t seen this problem before, try to solve it before scrolling down and reading the rest – you’ll get a lot more out of this article.
Get a pen and some paper and copy the nine dots arranged in a square below. To solve the problem, you need to join all nine dots by drawing no more than four straight lines. The straight lines must be continuous – i.e. you must not lift your pen from the paper once you start drawing. Don’t read any further until you’ve tried to solve the problem.
How did you get on? If you managed to solve it, give yourself a pat on the back and read on. If you’re not there yet, here’s a clue to help you. If you’re like most people, you will have tried to solve the problem by keeping your lines inside the ‘box’ created by the dots. But if you look at the instructions, there is no requirement to do this. So have another go at solving the problem, allowing yourself to draw outside the box. Again, don’t read any further until you’ve either solved it or given up.
OK if you’ve either solved it or had enough, click on the image below to see two of the usual solutions. Each time you click, a new solution will be revealed.
Solutions
You may need to click through to the post to see the solutions.
What did you make of that? Could you solve the problem the first time? Did it make any difference when I said you could go outside the box?
The Conventional Explanation
The usual way of presenting this problem is for a creativity trainer to only give the first set of instructions – i.e. without mentioning the fact that you allow to go outside the box. And nearly everybody (including me, when I first saw it) completely fails to solve the problem. But most creativity trainers don’t bother with the second stage – they simply reveal the solution to cast of astonishment and protest from the audience: “that’s not fair! You didn’t tell us we could go outside the box!” To which the trainer typically responds “Aha! But I didn’t tell you you couldn’t go outside the box!”.
The trainer then trots out the conventional explanation of the puzzle: we can’t solve the problem as long as we are thinking ‘inside the box’ created by our assumptions. Once we start to think ‘outside the box’ we open up many more possibilities and it becomes easy to solve the problem. This is true in so many areas of life – our education, past experience and habitual thinking patterns keep us trapped in limiting assumptions. It takes a real effort to challenge the assumptions and think outside the box. Most of us are very poor at doing this and have to work hard at it – unlike creative geniuses to whom this kind of thinking comes naturally.
In case you think I’m having a go at creativity trainers I’ll confess that a few years ago, on a couple of occasions, I was that trainer. Never again.
Challenging Creative Convention
The trouble with the usual way of presenting the nine-dot problem is that it contains (ahem) an unexamined assumption. I.e. that all we have to do is tell people they can go outside the box and they will find it easy to solve the problem. But most of the time people are not given the chance to find out – they are simply given the solution and told that the problem was their limited thinking. They are usually so astonished to discover that they are allowed to draw outside the box that they readily accept this explanation.
A few researchers have been sceptical and curious enough to test this assumption. In Creativity – Beyond the Myth of Genius Robert Weisberg describes two experiments in which people were told that the only way to solve the problem was to draw lines outside the square. Contrary to the ‘outside the box’ school of thought, this did not make problem easy to solve. In fact, only 20-25% of subjects were able to solve the problem, even though all of them allowed themselves to draw outside the box. And even the ones who did solve the problem took a long time to do so, and used trial and error, making many different drawings, rather than any special form of ‘creative thinking’.
Researchers went on to show that the success rate could be improved by giving subjects prior training in solving simpler line-and-dot problems, and also by giving them “detailed strategy instructions” about how to solve the problem:
Lung and Dominowski’s strategy instructions plus dot-to-dot.training facilitated solution of the nine-dot problem, but still only a little more than half of the subjects solved the problem, and they did so not smoothly in a sudden burst of insight, but only after a number of tries. This study provides particularly graphic evidence that insightful behaviour, contrary to the Gestalt view, is the result of expertise.
Robert Weisberg, The Myth of Genius
So the research evidence suggests that thinking outside the box fails to produce the expected creative solution. And far from being a hindrance, past experience and training can actually be the key to creative problem-solving.
What Do You Think?
If the problem was new to you, could you solve it just by following the original instructions?
Did it make any difference when you were told you could go outside the box?
Is ‘thinking outside the box’ a useful way to approach creativity or does it deserve its status as the most despised piece of business jargon? Or is it simply that, as Brian likes to say, there is no box?
About the Author: Mark McGuinness is a poet, creative coach and co-founder of Lateral Action. Subscribe today to get free updates by email or RSS.
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You guys have definitely opened up a can of worms on this one, and I’m loving the interactive blog posts lately, definitely setting you guys apart.
On one hand I agree with you, to be creative we don’t always need to look for a far-fetched or out there angle. However, I think the phrase gives meaning to help people try something different, after-all not everything has been done
Stumbled!
Cheers,
Glen
Interesting post, very good food for thought.
I really liked your last little bit about past experience and training.
I always figured it depends on how you define “outside the box” or how you define “box”.
Quite often where I work now, if I “think outside the box” that really only requires me to draw on past experience and/or past training, just as was suggested!
-Brett
I have to agree with Weisberg’s observations. I was previously aware of the puzzle and that the solution entailed drawing outside the box. However it took me quite some time and considerable trial and error before I found a solution.
I believe there is no box. Period- my opinion of course. I do believe in persistence though…
I also think that creativity depends on mindset. Eienstein said that he wasn’t smarter than anyone else, he was just more persistent than most. It can be easily argued that he was pretty smart however.
Without a box, persistence is the key as far as I am concerned. In order to be persistent, one has to actually believe they can solve problems with new solutions.
Biggest obstacle I find in dealing with people in the business world is their inability to do anything outside of what they have done in the past. They do live in a box. Successful leadership is dependent on innovation and creativity. “Waiting for things to get better” is not creative or innovative…
Creativity starts with an idea. If the result of the idea is not within tolerance (standards) developed through previous achievements (or lack thereof), it is often rejected by the mind.
This is a can o’ worms; a paradox?
Great topic for discussion though- I love this stuff!
Not too long ago, I saw another solution that only requires one line. But to do this, you have to think “outside the box” but think about a solution IN the box. I wish I could give credit to the author who described the (I think) 12 year old girl who solved the problem with one line, but I just don’t remember the article.
Hint: there is no requirement to use thin pencil lead.
@Marvin – That’s actually my favorite solution, and I was going to include it. But then I just knew we’d get a ton of “that’s cheating” comments
.
There’s a box. There is no box. Which I choose to follow depends on which situation faces me.
Tell me that my house is burning and that solving the puzzle will put out the fire and save my belongings, and I’ll bet I could solve it faster.
Present it to me in the morning when I’m still working on coffee, and I’ll see it as a frustrating, unsolvable challenge. Then I’ll yell, “NO FAIR!” and think dire thoughts about the person who tricked me.
So, my take is that it’s all relative to our motivation, inspiration and desire to find the solution to the challenges we face.
Or maybe I need more coffee.
The concept that “thinking outside the box” often requires training and practice to do effectively intrigues me. I was able to think of a couple different examples in my own experience (in chemical formulation and in art) where practice in simpler forms made my solution to complex forms more creative, but I’d never looked at it that way before. Thanks for the insight.
This reminds me of the recent opinion of group brainstorming that has surfaced over the last few years. It was commonly thought that getting a large group together and throwing out ideas was the best way to solve a problem or come up with a good idea.
Generally, you get a bunch of bad ideas and waste time and effort wading through them to get to a mediocre one at best.
When I first encountered such an idea, that brainstorming like this was useless, I was troubled, but the more I thought about it, I realized that the best ideas I have had have come through my own brainstorming or a session with just one other person.
Your entry about this was spot on. Real creatives find new rules to the equation and aren’t bound by what is present. Using lines to connect the dots even “outside the box” isn’t really that creative, especially with all the trial and error.
Here’s my solution to the problem: (and it only took one line – no one said how thick the line was supposed to be
)
http://www.kbennion.com/Clients/Misc/line.gif
The reason I like this site is that it challenges all this conventional “wisdom” and “rules” that our society seems to have imposed on us even within our own industries. Beethoven was genius because he “broke” the rules of music at the time. Stravinski did the same.
So, my suggestion to creatives is to know the rules so you can break them in way that presents real solutions and genius.
It’s about time more people came out and trashed this cliche.
Sure, thinking outside the box is creativity. But people forget the basics, the fundamentals. They try to go to 10 without counting 0, 1, 2.
How can you think outside the box if you don’t know what the box looks like? How about understanding how the box looks like and *then* you draw your *own* box?
You can’t just pull ideas out of thin air. Boxes often contain presents inside. That’s what they’re for.
I always dread hearing a client or co-worker say the words ‘ think outside the box.’ Am still owkring on a better way to say it.
Most hated business jargon, maybe not. Over used, absolutely.
I guess it doesn’t matter how helpful, creative, or original jargon is, if it catches on, it always rises (sinks?) to the level of cliche’ at some point.
Many other ways to look at it, even using box as the basic –
Look in a different box
Look in somebody else’s box
Put it in a bigger box
Who knows?
Outstanding point.
I’m putting this on my trivia/problem solver board here at my office.
Something to test out on my colleagues.
@Alyssa….I tire of overused clichés – so much in fact that I try to not use any in my vocabulary. Instead of saying “thinking outside the box” I say it with normal language, with phrases like: “looking at it differently”, “using a more creative solution”, “approach this uniquely” etc.
@lertom…..exactly. The box are the “rules” and in order to break the “rules” we need to understand the box. Great point.
All creative innovation happens in 5 minutes. It’s getting to those 5 minutes that can take a long time, and be hampered by the great and powerful box (a villainous character I dispatched at our company’s recent innovation conference http://www.powertoinnovate.com).
Boxes define constraints. Recognizing constraints can and often does lead to breakthrough innovation, if you’re willing to consider applying one of several problem solving methodologies.
For an example, consider how to eat soup with a fork:
http://andromeda-30.blogspot.com/2008/06/how-to-eat-soup-with-fork.html
Thanks everyone for the usual high standard of comments.
Tom, James — yes, I think persistence and motivation are critical to success in any creative work. It’s amazing how often the prize goes to the people who want it the most.
Marvin, Karl-Erik — thanks for adding to our stock of solutions!
lertom — Exactly. Banksy made a similar point when he said modern artists are prepared to do anything for art, except to learn to draw.
Jim — Yes it can take a lifetime to get to that five minutes, yet that’s what people remember, they’re not so interested in the lifetime’s hard toil. Good point about constraints, total freedom a.k.a. the blank page can be a real creativity killer.
Mark,
I love this blog post. Thank you. My $.02 below:
We all will agree that there is a need to think differently if you want to reach a different destination. We can’t expect ourselves to be in a different place in life if we are following where everyone else is going. A placeholder (or a shortcut name) for that thinking can be “thinking outside the box”
Your particular blog post itself is an example of that kind of creative thinking. You took a problem that someone used to demonstrate the “out of the box thinking” and put the problem and solution “within a box” to demonstrate what I call as “out of the box thinking”
We all might dislike the term “outside the box” but the need for thinking differently stays IMHO.
Best,
Raj
I hope this means people will stop saying that forever. I love this research. Those creative types used that box to hold us nerdy types in check – cause our limited visual skills didn’t allow us to see outside of the existing pattern of dots.
If you could debunk a couple of other sayings that no longer apply I would be forever grateful :
“That is a paradigm shift.”
“Six of one, half dozen of another” (maybe it’s just me and this one bothers me because I’m a CPA – but it drives me INSANE.)
“We provide evolution not revolution.”
“Leading edge not bleeding edge.”
And for brainstorming approaches, I love Edward de Bono’s book “Six Thinking Hats”.
No hat boxes involved.
Raj —
Geni — give us time …
Great deconstruction of the 9-dot problem!
Creative “geniuses” nearly always have deep expertise in their field of inquiry with just the right amount of assumption questioning. However they are usually surrounded by other rebel-experts in their field as well, and there is often a timing to their discoveries that stands on the shoulders of giants.
I love Michael Michalko’s perspective of his least fave buzzword in an interview I did with him:
““Thinking out of the box” should be replaced with “thinking without boxes.” “Lateral thinking” should be replaced with “generating alternatives. “”
We make boxes andthen expect people to go outside them! Let’s make cultures where no boxes exist-that’ll be the kicka*^ innovative company!
Oh, by the way, the rest of the interview is here: http://zenstorming.wordpress.com/2008/10/23/interview-creativity-expert-michalko/
While it’s true that challenging the assumptions does not, in itself, lead to the answer, it’s also true that it’s impossible to arrive at the answer without first challenging (or at least ignoring) the assumptions.
Well, you can create something inside a box, no doubt – the question is then whether this inside-the-box-thinking is helpful. In this case it’s not.
When you limit yourself to inside-the-box-thinking, you limit the possibilities you have.
The square says: Assumptions can be limits to yourself, so prove them.
It’s not about creativity at all.
Great article — Thanks Mark!
I like to Box Outside of The Thinking… can I still play?
I can solve the puzzle with one line…
…and one giant pencil!
I really enjoyed this article – and I like how you go against the grain of preconceived notions.
At the end of the day one must build a foundation of what has proven to work before they can expand in a successful way.
With apologies to Donovan: First there is a box, then there is no box, then there is.
Tom Allinder, in post #4: “Einstein said that he wasn’t smarter than anyone else, he was just more persistent than most.”
Einstein also said, “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.” So if the thinking we used when we created / identified our problem is the “box”, then, yes, we need to get “out of the box” — we need to get some new thinking.
Edison said “Genius is 1% inspiration, and 99% perspiration” (which I interpret as persistence). So, to come full circle back to Tom Allinder’s contribution: “In order to be persistent, one has to actually believe they can solve problems with new solutions.” New solutions require new thinking about the problem. Hence, “out of the box”.
The over-use of the expression may be regrettable, but I maintain that the underlying idea remains valid. Remember, insanity has been described as doing the same think [sic] over and over and expecting a different result.
I liked the article a great deal and also got a lot out of some of the comments.
Personally, I still use the phrase “outside the box” at times because it is part of colloquial language and as such can aid understanding / communication. Sometimes it helps achieve a result, rather than risk fostering a focus on semantics, or clouding the issue.
To me, a key aspect of creative thinking is “Relax”. It frees the mind to flow more freely.
One of the problems with group brainstorming sessions for example is that people can feel inhibited, and thus less creative. Being told they are “wrong” tends not to help either, which is the impression one can get when an example such as the dot exercise is used in a public setting. Being proven to be “uncreative” or a person with poor thinking skills in such an obvious and public way can be quite damaging to some. It can also alienate the trainer (reduce rapport) from the audience in the sense of “he/she is not like me”.
Great post and comments. Out-of-the-box should mean not doing things the same way they were done before. But to be successful at they you have to deeply understand your problem and the assumptions, constraints and dependencies. And then you challenge all of them.
What seems to be missing from many conversations on creativity is the importance of the above mentioned critical thinking skills, the playfulness required to break the rules or see around them, and the ability to go right brain when needed to create a holistic solution.
Einstein spend most of his time studying the problem. To know the problem is to begin to solve the problem.
I’ve found through the year these visual and sometimes physical puzzles to trivialize the creative process and I believe they can affects some people’s confidence if they can’t solve these sorts of problems. I’ve found no correlation between the ability to solve these visual problems and solving real world problems.
That said, its fun trying to solve them and any brain exercise is good.
To think outside the box, i will say refers to two concepts.
One: requires that you first understand the ‘box’ which in most cases refers to the immediate situation at hand. Saying there is no box is like saying there is no problem or pressing situation which does not quite agree with reality.
Two: the other refers to the ‘box’ as the usual or general approach to solving a particular problem or situation. Here, thinking outside the box connotes going beyond the norm.
To me, in both cases, thinking outside the ‘box’ holds true in that one needs a firm understanding of both the problem or situation and the tested ways or techniques of approaching the problem or situation. Thinking is the art of problem solving, it’s a tool however we choose to use it depends very much on our understanding of the ‘box’ irrespective of the scenarios cited above.
I disagree. Depends on what you call reality.
I agree with Tom Allinder above. I’d submit that when we witness a seemingly simple solution we do not believe we would not have thought of ourselves, we call it creativity. It’s not really so much thinking outside the box as it is thinking outside *our* box. Everyone has one, even people who are “creative”. This isn’t a flaw, it’s simply the way our minds work. Most effective creative people I know work very, very hard at it.
Yes, if I were presented this problem and given ample time to solve it, I would be able to come up with solutions. Then I would present it to a crowd over the course of 1 minute, and I would appear to be creative, even a genius. My point is: any of us can do this. “Think outside the box” is a waste of everyone’s time. If we replaced it with the equally cliche “The only place success comes before work is in the dictionary”, we’d all be better off.
Nice point Christian. Often when someone else seems to be thinking ‘outside the box’ they are in fact thinking ‘inside the box’ of a different discipline. From their point of view, the answer is obvious, because it’s based on knowledge and experience that we don’t have.
“Often when someone else seems to be thinking ‘outside the box’ they are in fact thinking ‘inside the box’ of a different discipline. From their point of view, the answer is obvious, because it’s based on knowledge and experience that we don’t have.”
A simple thing I do to jump out of my discipline’s parameters is go to the bookstore and deliberately browse sections not directly related to my discipline. Frequently, new/innovative ideas come from encouraging my mind to make connections between “not-my-discipline” and my regular way of thinking about things.
The box doesn’t exist.
Love the article, great “outside the box” thinking.
thinking outside the box and being creative and innovative
often has to do with finding a way to cheat something based
on the way it is initially described. “language proficiency” is therefore a big part of being able to successfully think outside the box.
let me give you a very eye-opening example which will closely
match the 9-dot puzzle above:
a lawyer who understands crystal-clear the language in
which the law is written/described can manipulate (cheat) his way through the weaknesses and through the many small mistakes that may have been committed by those who initially drafted the law.
any weaknesses (lack of clarity) in describing something clearly in the beginning presents an opportunity for others to cheat “on the basis” of those weaknesses in the initial description. could this form of cheating “really” be the so-called “creativity” or “genius” ??
perhaps geniuses are Nothing more than people who can cheat on the basis of careful scrutinization of initial descriptions and capitalizing greatly on just those weaknesses ! !
Or just break the rules.
I always hated that nine-dot exercise, and you put the finger on why. Creativity is actually WORK. That’s all. Any writer or artist knows this. If you want to have the creativity of an artist, you have to do what an artist does – as the old joke says: How do you get to Carnegie Hall? PRACTICE!
Maudecat – Thank you, I agree with this statement 99%:
I do like to leave a 1% space for the magic to happen.
I remember when I first tried to solve this problem:
- First I asked him if I could get a really thick brush, in that case I could connect the dots with just one straight (but thick) line
- When he said “no”, I asked the guy if he could give me a pair of scissors. After he declined, I painted the 9 dots making sure there was enough space at the top and the bottom of the piece of paper, carefully tore a cut (if this isnt correct English, Im sorry Im from Germany) between the left and the middle dots starting at the top going almost all the way to the bottom of the piece of paper. Then turned the piece of paper by 180 degrees and did the same thing (tearing the paper between the middle and the (now) left row of dots, starting at the top going almost all the way down). That made it pretty easy to get all the 9 dots, which were in a square (he never said they would have to stay in a square) with a single straight line!
Then I was made to put on a straight-jacket and only came back from a long vacation trip recently
.
On a more serious note, though…Im wondering if this is really “outside the box” thinking or “critical thinking”. Okay, it obviously is “outside the box”, pretty literally, but when I think of thinking outside the box I think of it as thinking outside the norm..asking the kind of questions that other people have never thought of before, etc.. Whereas the outside-the-box exercise seems to be just as much “critical thinking” to me.
Like if I asked you…hey yousaid: “To solve the problem, you need to join all nine dots by drawing no more than four straight lines”, right? and then went on to use circling motions or curves to connect the dots (and maybe 3-4 STRAIGHT lines if i still needed them).
Btw, how do you define a straight line? I just had the thought of using one straight line connecting three dots, but continuing to draw that straight line on the back of that piece of paper to get back to where I started drawing that “straight” line. Once im back at the start (of course Id never stop drawing just slow down dramatically to have enough time) I would turn the piece of paper by about 45 degrees so Im still capable of drawing the same line but connecting some other dots with the same straight line.
Actually simply solutions are better so Id just connect three dots with a straight line, stop (it isnt against the rules) turn the piece of paper by 90 degrees and continue to draw to connect 2 more points with that same “straight line”, etc.. Nobody mentioned the line had to be straight on that piece of paper, I just had to “draw” a straight line (or well 4 max!), right?;)
If I arrived at those solutions in about two minutes of playing around with the piece of paper) do I need a straight jacket??lol My math teacher sure thought so…and gave me an F on a maths test, because it only stated “solve the equation” (sorry again if this isnt correct English!) and I multipled every equation with a “0″ and got the result 0 = 0 for every equation (it didnt say anything about having to find the value for the unknown variable and it was a math class not a mind-reading class!;)).
Just out of curiosity, though: How many people actually solve the problem WITHOUT being told they can draw outside the box (or well how many did, when that problem was still unknown?)? Im afraid without getting a lot of time to think about it or being told that I can draw outside the square, I wouldnt have come up with a solution (but once told I had many (and could probably generate more) as you can tell).
How many percent solved that problem without being told they can draw outside the square?
Ive been wondering if “street smarts” exist. Ive also been wondering whether creativity is what makes a person appear street smart vs. another who doesnt? Any ideas?
PS: “Creativity is actually work” / 1 % for the magic to happen.
I know people who are so uncreative, I tried to use parental control software to limit my online time (yes Im indeed a little bit crazy) and they told me “well…there’s just one big problem with your idea” – “Which one?” – “You’ll know the password”. He was actually serious about it and I bet the thought of writing down a random complicated password, typing it into the parental control software quickly and then giving the piece of paper with the password to a friend (or a family member as I did) is something that someone with that rather low level of creativity will probably never be able to come up with, no matter how hard he works.
I agree with the concept of creativity needing to be put into action or else it’s useless, but there are certainly different levels of creativity in people and those who arent creative enough can work hard all day long, theyll not come up with too many creative solutions.
“How many people actually solve the problem WITHOUT being told they can draw outside the box ” – Not many.
It is misleading when it says ‘it becomes easy when people are told to think outside the box’ (or something similar), because actually only 20% solved the problem given this information. Granted this is a large amount more than without this information, but by no means does it become ‘easy’, as I’m sure the 20% shows.
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