How to search for ideas outside the box

“Give me some out-of-the-box ideas!”

Sounds familiar?

How often has someone asked you for out-of-the-box ideas?

How often have you been able to respond with such ideas? When I ask my clients these two questions here is what they say “I am often asked to give out-of-the-box ideas. I have rarely been able to do that.”

“Why?”

“Because I don't know what the box is.”

So what is the box then? Here is how I explain the box. Imagine that you are inside a room. It is a strange room. It has no doors, no windows and no ceiling. The height of the wall is six feet. I am inside that room. Outside that room is another room. No doors, no windows and no ceiling in this room either. This room is filled with my ‘assumptions’. The height of the wall is 12 feet. Outside that room is another similar one; the height of the wall is 24 feet. This room is filled with my ‘logic’. How do I get out of my room? There are two possible ways in which I can get out of my room. One is to dig a tunnel or another is for someone to drop me a rope ladder from a helicopter and I climb out of my room. I need external help to get out of my room. We are prisoners of our assumptions and logic. They do not allow us to get out of the box. To get out of the box, I would need to challenge my assumptions and logic. So the first thing I need to do to get out of the box is to list out my assumptions about the situation or problem.

Let us look at an example. I am in the chocolates business. I have been targeting children with my messages. Now I find that my business is slowing down. What are my assumptions about who consumes chocolates? All these years I have assumed that children love chocolates. So I target only children for my communication. The time has come to challenge this assumption that ‘only children love chocolates’.

When I start digging a bit deeper, I find many adults love chocolates but are closet eaters. They would not like to be seen eating chocolates! What stops them? Lack of social acceptance. So what if create a campaign that makes it acceptable for adults to eat chocolates? This is out-of-the-box thinking. Cadbury's in India turned their chocolate business around in the Nineties, by challenging an assumption, the assumption that only children love chocolates and by implication adults don’t.

The first step in thinking out-of-the-box is to identify our assumptions and challenge them. Yet, challenging assumptions is not as easy as it sounds. Often people who are not affected by the problem identify and challenge assumptions better. So look around for colleagues, friends and consultants and talk to them. Engage them in conversations and identify the assumptions that imprison you.

Know your box and get out of it!

(R. Sridhar is an innovation facilitator, consultant and coach)

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