Thinking and Boxes

Why Thinking Outside the Box May Not Be a Good Idea

Background

This post was originally a reply to a LinkedIn comment on the topic of thinking outside the box, but it got too big for LinkedIn’s character limit, so I have taken the opportunity to expand on it.

What is the box?

What is this “box” that people talk about thinking outside of? When people say we must think outside of the box, they usually mean that they cannot see how to solve their current problem with their current knowledge or existing approaches. So they are really talking about the solution space.

Because of this, as a general rule, I don’t agree with people who say that we need to think outside the box. In almost all cases, what they should be doing is redefining the box to match their problem.

Need for a box

However, the box is, in most cases, a key factor in creativity and innovation. Witness Picasso’s Blue Period, where he had to be creative because he couldn’t afford a wide range of paint. Without some constraints you have a solution in search of a problem - you may find something, but most likely will not. It’s also worth noting that most inappropriate boxes seem to occur because of over-constrained solution spaces or poorly understood problems.

Need for clear requirements

The biggest contributor to the failure of projects is the lack of clear requirements. In other words, they didn’t fail because they were constrained, but because the constraints were unclear or wrong. It might be surprising that, as a systems engineer specializing in requirements, I do not regard clear definitions and constraints at the start of a project as being essential for project success. Note that caveat: they are not essential in the early stages of a project but must be continuously refined during the project until you have a complete, clear, unambiguous set of requirements. In this, I follow the work of Parnas & Clements and Tom Gilb.

But the box isn’t rigid

So I don’t regard the box as totally rigid. You absolutely must question initial constraints. They are often spurious, either unnecessary or appropriate for a historical situation but not the current one. Also, people often ask for a specific solution rather than understanding their real problem. As a consequence, your initial definition of the box might be somewhat vague and it is very likely that as the problem to be solved becomes clearer, the shape of the box changes, or even disappears in the sense that the problem becomes not worth solving.

It is in these senses that I regard a box as essential. You always need a box. If you don’t know what it looks like, that’s job one. If you do know what it looks like, make sure it needs to look like that.

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