How to think out of the box

a TED

talk

By Giovanni Corazza

Have you ever been assigned an easy task,which for you is actually very difficult?

That is when you experience

frustration

For example,when your singing teacher asks“Sing from your diaphragm!”

That’s easy for HER to do, but for you it’sactually difficult and it’s a secret of the singing greats.

Or when your boss says, “Come on! Give me your ideas! Think out-of-the-box!”

“Easy, simple.” But actually very hard to do.

You need practice to do this.

You should know:• HOW to get out of the box• WHERE to go, and• HOW to come back into the box

(because that’s where you live)

The first question you should ask is

WHY?

Why should we go out of the box?

We feel safe in our boxes.

Why risk our reputation?

We are all nodes in a network sharinginformation with each other in real time.

Eventually, we will all possess the same information.

And if we all possess the same information, what distinguishesus from one another?

Where does our dignity as human beings lie?

So to think creatively, to think out of the box,is not a LUXURY, that only a few people possess,

But a

NECESSITY

The next question we should ask is

WHICH?

Which box are we talking about?

IS IT OUR MIND?

No.

Rather, it is a boundary WITHIN our minds between…..

WHAT YOU KNOW. WHAT YOU HAVEN’T THOUGHTABOUT.

This box we live in is a creation of

OUR TEACHINGSOUR SUCCESSESOUR FAILURES

Which make up, in most part, who we are.

And whatever is OUTSIDE this “box” is INVISIBLE to us. That is why it’s so RISKY to go out.

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How do we go out of the box?

HOW?

We perceive thingsas they are because that’s how they have been our whole life.

This is convergent informationBut what we need is,

Information.

This is the ONE MECHANISM requiredfor out of the box thinking.

Divergent informationrefers to something thatis WRONG, ABSURD orNOT APPARANTLY RELEVANT

We need divergent informationTo cross the border within our mindsBetween what we know and what we do not know yet.

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Where do you go once you are outof the box?

WHERE?

Once we are out of the box, whereDo we go?

There is no preset direction.

There is no preset direction once we get out of the box.

There is a potential situation that brings us to the feeling that…...

Nothing is making sense!

We need to go back now.

Back to the safety

of our box!

We need to RESIST

this temptation

We need to value LONG thinking.

What is LONG thinking?

Judging something as an ensemble rather than judging its individual parts.

Like judging an entire book rather than eachof the words, or judging an entire song

rather than each of the notes.

Judging an ensemble of ideas and applicationof these ensembles to areas where they

have never been applied.

We need to be OPEN MINDED.

We need to think of ALTERNATIVES

And not THE RIGHT ANSWER!

Because when it comes to CREATIVITY

There is noone right answer!

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What is the value of our new idea?

WHAT?

How do we assess the value of the new idea we got from ourtime exploring out of the box?

We could test the idea for some particular value and then test it on a problem that is not our own.Evaluating it per say.

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What is it a good idea to challengethe current environment?

WHEN?

When do you challenge everyone around you? To thinkout of the box?

We do this by incorporating elementsof divergent information in our current environment.

Use metaphors & match differentdisciplines!

Only in that case the environment will become prone to the generation

of new ideas!

So these are just some guidelines that show that thinking out of the box

isn’t really that hard!

A QUICK JUMPOUT OF THE BOX

IS MORE INSIGHTFUL THAN

A LIFETIME OF STANDARD THINKING

GIOVANNI E. CORAZZA

THANK YOU

Created byKunal Eapen, IIIT Allahabad

During an internship by Prof. Sameer Mathur, IIM Lucknow

www.iiminternship.com