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Inside the Box

Drew Boyd and Jacob Goldenberg
From INSIDE THE BOX by Drew Boyd and Jacob Goldenberg. Copyright © 2013 by Drew Boyd and Jacob Goldenberg. Reprinted by permission of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
getAbstract © 2013

Rating (10 is best)

Overall: 8
Applicability: 8
Innovation: 8
Style: 7

Take-Aways

Creativity comes from thinking inside the box – the right way.
Everyone suffers from “fixedness”: People can’t imagine things being different than they really are.
You can use “templates” – standard patterns – to enhance creativity.
Restraints focus and fuel creativity, so innovate within a “closed world.”
Innovate by “subtraction”: Take away some aspect of an item.
Innovate by “division”: Split objects and processes into smaller sections.
Innovate by “multiplication”: Modify some aspect of an item.
Innovate by making one part of an object perform more than one function.
Innovate by making one attribute of an object dependent on another.
Exposing and debunking “false contradictions” leads to innovation.

Relevance

What You Will Learn

In this summary, you will learn: 1) How most people misunderstand creativity, 2) What real creativity involves and 3) How you can become systematically creative.

Recommendation

Authors Drew Boyd and Jacob Goldenberg explain that their title refers to their rejection of the idea that creativity comes from thinking outside the box – as the cliché goes. They clearly enjoy systematically demolishing misconceptions about creativity. They demonstrate that you can become systematically, practically, functionally creative. Their explanations are clear, and they include numerous, convincing real-world examples of new ideas and innovations to illustrate their techniques. If you’ve ever come away from a brainstorming session excited by the experience, and reviewed your notes only to realize that no one generated any new ideas, then step inside this readable, inspiring box. getAbstract recommends Boyd and Goldenberg’s manual to a broad audience, but especially to innovators and to those interested in creativity and psychology.

Summary

Creativity

People usually think of creativity as freewheeling and anarchic. Terms like “brainstorming” evoke ideas falling in torrents, like rain. Being urged to think “outside the box” suggests that your best thinking occurs beyond everyday limits. Common thinking says you must escape that “box” if you want to be creative. Common thinking is wrong.

Alex Osborn, founder of BBDO ad agency, coined the phrase “brainstorming” in 1953, arguing that the process encourages the collective thinking that provides organizations with many free ideas. Academics studying brainstorming found that generating ideas as a group conveys no particular benefits. Groups generate fewer ideas, and of lower quality, than individuals working alone. The most productive creativity occurs “inside the box.” Creativity does not work best when unrestrained; constraint fuels creativity. People become usefully creative when they utilize “templates.” The mind naturally follows patterns. The artists Salvador Dali and Michelangelo, and writers like Robert Frost and Agatha Christie, used templates to focus their creativity.

Build on the concept of templates to be creative in any situation. This method – “Systematic Inventive Thinking” – relies on two foundational ideas:

Search the “closed world” – Look for ideas in your “closed world.” Work where you are with what you have. This principle utilizes constraints to focus and drive creativity.
“Function follows form” – The principle reverses the notion that “form follows function.” When encountering a problem, people begin with a specific, concrete issue at hand and seek a solution. Instead, generate “an abstract, conceptual solution” and apply it to the problem.

“Subtraction”

Apply “subtraction” by taking away some “essential component” of the object, system or process you’re trying to innovate. This component has to be “internal,” something inherent to the object, like a filament to a light bulb or a screen to a television. Like everyone else, you experience “fixedness.” You see things as they are and assume that’s how they must be. Or so it seems until you innovate by subtracting something that everyone takes for granted. To spur creativity with subtraction, follow five basic steps:

List the “internal components” of the object, service or process you want to change.
Select an “essential component.” Imagine getting rid of it, either entirely – “full subtraction” – or in part – “partial subtraction.”
Visualize what you’d create by subtracting this component.
Identify the positive attributes, benefits and values of the change.
Is this innovation feasible? Can you create it? If not, can you modify the idea so it becomes feasible?

“Division”

Break an object or process into pieces, and rearrange the pieces, sections or steps. You’ll either generate new benefits or experience old benefits in new ways. Apply division by:

“Functional division” – Divide an activity or item by function. Airlines break the check-in process into distinct steps by function, while some glue manufacturers produced a new product by separating out adhesives into two parts, resin and hardener.
“Physical division” – Divide an item into distinct objects. Imaging taking a hacksaw to the object. For example, think of submarines. The first submarines consisted only of a single compartment. Today they contain multiple “cells,” which makes them safer. If you puncture an early submarine, it floods. Today, airtight doors divide a sub into sections.
“Preserving division” – Make smaller versions of something. For instance, rather than having one big information storage device, carry a second, smaller one in your phone.

To use division to foster creativity, follow five basic steps:

List the internal components of the object, service or process you want to innovate.
Decide if the item is best for functional or physical division or preservation.
Visualize your innovation to the existing item.
Identify the positive benefits and values of the suggested changes.
Is this innovation feasible? Can you create it? If not, can you modify the idea so it becomes feasible?

“Multiplication”

Pick an aspect of the closed world you’re working with, and multiply a component to see what happens. Take leap of faith: Multiply something, modify it and trust that it will produce a useful solution, even if you can’t yet identify the problem. Multiplication disrupts your fixed view of the world by providing a structured method for creating new things that you won’t at first understand. Practice modifying the multiplied components. Practice improves your judgment about what to multiply and how to modify it.

Multiplication has a long history of generating successful innovations. Consider the history of photography. In 1841, William Fox Talbot patented the process for creating single-image photographic negatives. In 1859, multiple pictures of the same scene were combined in “the first panoramic camera.” In 1861, Oliver Wendell Holmes combined “two offset images” to create an “illusion of depth” in “stereoscopy.” That same year, an inventor used red, green and blue filters while taking multiple images of the same subject, and combined them to create color images. In 1878, Eadweard Muybridge set up 24 cameras in a row, one triggered after another, to photograph a running horse. Showing these images in sequence created the illusion of movement, the first “moving picture.” Each of these breakthroughs multiplied some aspect of photography. To generate creativity with multiplication, follow five basic steps:

List the internal components of the object, service or process you want to innovate.
Pick one of those components and copy it.
List the essential characteristics of that component, and change one of them.
Visualize how this modification might result in a new creation.
Identify the positive attributes, benefits and values of the change.
Is this innovation feasible? Can you create it? If not, can you modify the idea so it becomes feasible?

“Task Unification”

Take an “existing component” of the item you’re working on – a new function or task. For example, the managers of a hotel in Seoul, South Korea, wanted to make returning customers feel at home. The hotel paid taxi drivers to chat with inbound guests and find out if they’d stayed at the hotel before. If they had, the drivers put their bags to the right side of the hotel desk. If they hadn’t, they put the bags on the left. This signaled the hotel’s staff members to acknowledge returning guests. You can apply this technique in three general ways:

“Outsourcing” – Many technology companies devote a lot of time to creating the software or functions for their machines. Conversely, many outsourcers write iPhone apps that people then purchase.
Making the best of what you have – Take something in your closed world and give it an additional function. Scottish theater director John Doyle did this with stage musicals. Rather than hiring an orchestra, Doyle had the actors play instruments. The original production was a hit, and other companies staged musicals for less money.
Moving from the “inside out” – Take functions previously performed by something outside the object you’re innovating, and find an internal element that completes this function. For example, a medical equipment company wanted to improve its training. It created engagement and efficiency by shifting some training functions from the sales force to the customers.

Follow these steps to utilize task unification:

List the internal and external components of the closed world you’re innovating.
Choose one of these components, and give it an extra function. You can combine two functions, assign an internal component an extra external function, or vice versa.
Visualize how this modification might result in a new creation.
Identify the positive attributes, benefits and values of the changes.
Is this innovation feasible? Can you create it? If you can’t, can you modify it so that it becomes feasible?

“Attribute Dependency”

When one attribute of something changes, another attribute changes too. To apply “attribute dependency,” take two aspects of the item you want to innovate that were previously independent, and make them dependent in a useful “meaningful way.” Attribute dependency is “responsible for more than one third of all innovations.” Imagine a baby bottle that changed color according to the milk’s temperature. You wouldn’t have to test and retest the milk to make sure you won’t burn your baby’s mouth.

List all the variables in the situation. Arrange the variables in a table, putting independent variables in columns and dependent variables in rows. Fill in the table, using “current market dynamics.” This means identifying which variables are already linked. Use a “1” when there is a link, and a “0” for no link. It’s not unusual to have a table completely filled with zeros: When you start, all attributes might be independent. Start changing the table. For each 0, put a 1. Ask testing questions: Can these dependencies exist and, if so, what are the benefits? Work through each relationship, testing for benefits and feasibility.

Contradictions

Contradictions confuse and frustrate people. What should you do when two aspects of a situation “are connected yet directly opposed to one another”? Approached with the right attitude, contradictions are exciting. They give you “a pathway to creativity.” Recognize that most contradictions don’t actually exist. They appear concrete because of mental “fixedness.”

Eliminate most contradictions by thinking in a new or clearer way about the topic. “A false contradiction occurs when information is hidden from you or when you make an implicit assumption that isn’t true.” Associating two things with one another and treating that association as necessary often causes false contradictions. For instance, you want to earn more money, but your company is cutting its budget: That seems contradictory. To determine if a contradiction is real or apparent, identify its two parts and the connector. One statement is “I want to increase my salary.” The other is “the company needs to cut its budget.” “But” links the two. Test that connection. Review your assumptions.

Don’t compromise between two sides of a contradiction. That ensures that neither quality of an object gets fully developed. Reconsider either the two linked sides of the contradiction, or the link, or both. For example, the owner of an insurance company wanted to move his staff from a “straight salary” plan to paying a base salary plus commission. The sales staff didn’t want to change because they didn’t know how much they would earn. The owner resolved this apparent contradiction through multiplication. He let the staff work on straight salary, but kept records on their sales activities, and documented how much more they’d earn with commissions. This dissolved their resistance and showed that an apparent contradiction was not real.

About the Authors

Drew Boyd directs the Master of Science in Marketing Program at the University of Cincinnati. Jacob Goldenberg, editor of the International Journal of Research in Marketing, is a professor at Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Quotes

“The traditional view of creativity is that it is unstructured and doesn’t follow rules or patterns.”
“Contradictions exist in all problem solving domains.”
“We all suffer from fixedness: the tendency to see objects only in a traditional way or use them as they have been traditionally used.”
“The most highly creative humans use templates to create extraordinary results.”
“In many products or processes, some elements, components or steps will be dependent on others. As one thing changes, something else changes.”
“Multiplication has been the uncredited force behind some of history’s most exciting innovations.”
“Most contractions are false. They exist in our minds but are not real. They occur because of (once again) fixedness.”
“A contradiction exists when a particular situation contains features or ideas that are connected yet directly opposed to one another.”
“Paradoxically (here’s a contradiction for you!) spotting a contradiction within a Closed World is a very exciting moment, because it fuels enormous creativity: contradiction is a blessing. It is a pathway to creativity.”
“Compromise is not creative.”
“Task Unification is attractive precisely because it’s so simple and easy to deploy.”
“Use Task Unification is to make an internal component take on the function of an external component in a Closed World.”
“Take a step into the unknown. Don’t try to anticipate a logical or practical invention. Instead, look before you leap.”

"A very important read!" - Summary of "Inside the Box"