Thinking outside the box
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Thinking outside the box is a cliché or catchphrase used to refer to looking at a problem from a new perspective without preconceptions, sometimes called a process of lateral thought. The catchphrase has become widely used in business environments, especially by management consultants, and has spawned a number of advertising slogans.
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[edit] Origin
The first appearance of the phrase is obscure. However, both Martin Kihn of Fast Company[1] and the Random House Word Mavens[2] concur that the phrase relates to a traditional topographical puzzle called the nine dots puzzle.
According to Kihn, consultants of the 1970s and 1980s tried to make their prospective clients feel inadequate by presenting them with the puzzle. The challenge is to connect the dots by drawing four straight, continuous lines, and never lifting the pencil from the paper. The puzzle is easily solved, but only if you draw the lines outside of the confines of the square area defined by the nine dots themselves. Thus, the phrase "thinking outside the box" was born. The Word Mavens refer to Prof. Daniel Kies of the College of DuPage, who observes that the puzzle is only difficult because "we imagine a boundary around the edge of the dot array."
The nine dots puzzle is much older than the slogan. It appears in Sam Loyd's 1914 Cyclopedia of Puzzles.[3] In the 1951 compliation The Puzzle-Mine: Puzzles Collected from the Works of the Late Henry Ernest Dudeney, the puzzle is attributed to Dudeney himself.[4] Lexicographer David Barnhart reports that he encountered the phrase in 1975.[5]
Sam Loyd's original formulation of the puzzle[6] called it "Christopher Columbus's egg puzzle." Envisioning the target dots of the puzzle as eggs makes it clear that they have area and are not infinitesimally small points, or that the strokes that connect them have width. Either of these features allows a three-line solution (near-parallel lines that meet far away from the nine points) or even a one-line solution (using a line thick enough to touch all nine points).
[edit] Other uses of the phrase
The phrase is parodied by the Taco Bell advertising slogan, "Think outside the bun."
[edit] References
- ^ "Outside the Box": The Inside Story, retr/ Aug. 2, 2006.
- ^ The Mavens' Word of the Day, "Outside the Box Thinking", retr. Aug. 2, 2006.
- ^ Sam Loyd, Cyclopedia of Puzzles. (The Lamb Publishing Company, 1914)
- ^ J. Travers, The Puzzle-Mine: Puzzles Collected from the Works of the Late Henry Ernest Dudeney. (Thos. Nelson, 1951)
- ^ Research by "RonButters" posted to American Dialect Society mailing list June 2, 2000, retrieved Aug. 2, 2006.
- ^ Facsimile from Cyclopedia of Puzzles - Columbus's Egg Puzzle is on right-hand page at http://www.mathpuzzle.com
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
- The Nine Dots puzzle - page on the puzzle by Prof. Daniel Kies
