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September 11, 2003
Thinking out of the box often isn't good
In the spirit of Rich's "Found while looking for something else", I ran into this thought-provoking piece by Nicholas G. Carr today.
(Nicholas has recently become the most favorite I.T. pundit to hate, when he wrote "IT Doesn't Matter" and instantly put a whole lot of CIOs on the defensive in front of newly-enlightened CEOs and Boards of Directors. I'm anxiously awaiting his book on the topic, Does IT Matter?: Information Technology and the Corrosion of Competitive Advantage to be released next spring.)
Anyways, Nicholas wrote back in 2001 that far too often, businesses (and the people within them) focus so much on long-term disruptive visions ("thinking out of the box"), they forget that average people (especially their potential customers) don't change so quickly. "Thinking out of the box" has become so ingrained in business culture as a capability to be sought after, rarely--if ever--is it questioned as a valid or practical approach. I've even worked for a company in the past that institutionalized the "out of the box" thought process (since ran out of money).
There are times when wild speculation is appropriate - in research efforts, scenario planning exercises and risk management, for instance. And creative thinking is always valuable. But when making day-to-day investment, operating and marketing decisions, be sure your thoughts stay anchored to the here and now.
I think the toughest aspect of critical thinking is maintaining the "meta-thinking" process: the process of thinking about the thinking process. Excercises that help focus the mind in new directions are hard enough; it's even more difficult to think about the exercise, and whether the results are relevant and applicable.
Nicholas makes several excellent points in this article, that I hope I can keep in mind: (1) the people who use a product rarely, if ever, understand or appreciate the ingenuity that went into it's design (2) it's easy to invent a fictional (aka "visionary") future, but the real success is in anticipating the next plodding step of the masses (3) no matter how much "thinking out of the box" I do, it all has to fit within the box of stuff people will buy, or it'd better make for good sci-fi reading.
Posted by pete at September 11, 2003 09:31 PM
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Comments
I really want to know how any one can change him/her self and thick out of the box.
Posted by: Meleen Othman at December 3, 2003 08:53 AM
Who thicks out of the box?:)
Posted by: Josh at January 8, 2004 06:32 AM