Meaning
To approach a problem from beyond conventional assumptions, rejecting the self-imposed boundaries that usually limit solutions. It is the corporate world's favourite invitation to creativity - now so familiar that it has itself become a byword for exactly the conformist thinking it claims to escape. Ubiquitous in business and consulting speak, and often mocked as management filler; the nine-dot puzzle is worth citing when precision matters, since the phrase's whole point is its literal geometry. Regional use: General English; American business origin.
Origin
Behind it lies the nine-dot puzzle: connect all nine dots with four straight lines without lifting the pen, a task impossible unless the lines run beyond the square the dots suggest. The puzzle's career as a creativity metaphor is documented from 1954, when the Dallas Morning News reported a Massachusetts Institute of Technology instructor urging students to go outside the dots, and a Detroit newspaper wrote in 1959 of breakthrough thinking outside the nine-dot square. The exact phrase arrived late: the first attested use is generally given as 1971, when Michael R. Notaro Jr. instructed readers of the journal Data Management to THINK OUTSIDE THE BOX. There were precursors - an 1888 Annual Register line about Liberals scarcely venturing to think outside the lines of their leader, step outside the box in 1969, think outside the dots in 1970 - and later claims that consultants popularized it with the puzzle in the 1970s and 1980s. A much-repeated story crediting the Walt Disney Company's culture is flagged as unsourced.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- outside the box
- think out of the box
- thinking outside the box
Usage Examples
- The committee promised to think outside the box, then approved the same design with a different font.
- To fit the museum into the budget, the architects had to think outside the box - literally, sinking the galleries underground.
- Her pitch to think outside the box fell flat with a team that had heard it at every planning day since 1998.