Outside The Box—NOT

Article published in prestigious promotional products industry magazine, The Counselor, says that teaching people to think outside the box is not actually helpful. Good, critical thinking requires mastery of whats inside the box before it makes sense to push the box boundaries.

Entrepreneur and freelance writer, Phillip A. Ross, has published Get Acquainted with the Box Before Breaking Out" in the March 2003 issue of the prestigious promotional products industry magazine, The Counselor. When we teach people to think outside the box before they have mastered thinking inside the box we are teaching them to break the rules before they master them," said Ross. Such thinking undermines the creative process by making people think that they can forget about mastering the basics of a discipline."

Ross cites two examples of famous artists who broke existing limitations of their medium. Pablo Picasso, known for his abstract art, was an accomplished painter in the realism style before he ventured into abstract art. And Joseph Heller was an English teacher who creatively broke the rules of grammar in his book, Something Happened (Scribner, 1974). Both artists were masters of their respective disciplines before they successfully broke the rules. And they could get away with it only because they had mastered the basics first!

While a creative idea often comes unbidden out of unexpected places, it requires discipline, study and order to make something of it. Apart from discipline and order, what passes for creativity is nonsense, and to suggest otherwise actually undermines and/or weakens the creative process.

Phillip A. Ross is the owner of Business Specialties (www.business-specialties.com), which focuses on helping businesses and organizations promote themselves through advertising specialties, print ads, Internet marketing, and public relations.