I was reading the Harvard Business Review blog (shocking, I know) at hbr.org and ran into a piece entitled "Stop Thinking Outside the Box." Well, immediately I'm insulted by what I see is a cheap marketing 101 attempt to be different simply by taking the opposite approach. This is what bad marketers do as a matter of course: "Think shampoo is the only way to wash your hair? Here's what you don't know." "Think Lincoln was a good president? Here's what you don't know." Ad infinitum, you can use the ploy on any topic.
The author was arguing that you shouldn't think outside the box until you know the limitations of the box itself. C'mon, really! That's your insight? As I replied to the blog, "It's like saying you have to breathe out before you can breathe in, duh!" This is what Harvard is telling me?
The author responded, saying that he wasn't being contrary for contrary's sake and maybe not everyone understood what I took to be common knowledge. He asked what out of the box insights I could offer. Well, I had to think. Following is my response.
Dan: I suppose I objected to the straw man aspect of your original post which makes for too easy of a target. And starting with a cliché to tear down doesn’t lead to much that’s new, at least that’s been my experience.
But to contradict myself, your article has taken some interesting turns, perhaps like a Rorschach test. My nature is to think a bit differently or so I tell myself (and like everyone, only on a few topics). To my mind, those who really think out of the box (you’ve made me hate that phrase) probably intuit what you suggest about understanding the current limitations before jumping to a new perspective. Which is why I had a Duh! moment with your article: of course that’s what you do, why make a big deal about it?
I’ve had a couple of pretty good out of the box moments – a couple in decades, so my track record is hardly in line with Steve Jobs or Niels Bohr. Or perhaps I’ve had more than I might think… maybe the standard I set for being out of the box is too high?
In business settings (I come from music and writing now to marketing) out of the box is easy as most in the room are so conservative. Executives claim they want out of the box but they don’t, they want “the same but different,” like Hollywood (out of the box thinking is ‘Let’s make another Jaws but this time with squirrels!').
My insight when it comes to marketing and business in general is this: After 2008, all bets are off. What once worked probably won’t work now… these are different times, revolutionary times. Waiting for the dust to settle won’t do, as the dust isn’t going to settle into what once was. Using past crises as a guide for surviving this one won’t do… this just may be one of those times when past is not prologue.
Sure, some things remain immutable at the deeper, human end: no one wants to grow old, we all want our children to do better than we did, we seek to protect our families, heroes will be heroes (as Joseph Campbell told us).
But the business activities that take place above these primordial basics will be forced to change very radically. Therefore, whether we like it or not we are all being forced to think outside the box because the box itself, with all of its historical intelligence and conventional wisdom, is close to being irrelevant.
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Take that, freakin' Harvard!
“Consumers want a new story... authenticity, not spin... participation, not propaganda.”
