

The problem, says William Davd Hopper, is to think "outside the dots" about the questions of how to feed a hungry world. "Canada Entering Big League In Research". This teaches us, we should avoid imposing limitations that are not in our problem, as I told you before in the cases of Kettering and Reppe. We must ask ourselves: "What are the actual boundaries of the problem?" Perhaps some of you have seen this little problem before. the next aplitude for creative thinking defining the problem. "Incentiveness, Motivation, Training Needs of a Scientist". " 'to think outside the box': meaning and origin".

One of our biggest advertising agencies "Breakthrough thinking is the fresh approach, the new concept, that gets outside the nine-dot square." " 'Breakthrough thinking' gets outside 9-dot square". Learn to go outside the dots and you may be the one to solve man's most puzzling problems. Don't let your thinking be contained in a small square of knowledge. began his course with a group of graduate students one day by walking to the blackboard and drawing nine dots in this fashion We are not here to go through old routines. said that the Liberal party became a one-man party, which scarcely ventured to think outside the lines prescribed by its dictator. ^ The Annual Register: a review of public events at home and abroad, for the year 1887.^ "think outside the box - Definition, meaning & more - Collins Dictionary".^ "box - definition of box in English - Oxford Dictionaries".Moreover, it is claimed that the use of the nine-dot puzzle in consultancy circles stems from the corporate culture of the Walt Disney Company, where the puzzle was used in-house. According to The Creative Thinking Association of America, Mike Vance popularized the phrase "thinking out of the box". According to John Adair, he introduced the nine dots puzzle in 1969, from which the saying comes. According to Martin Kihn, it goes back to management consultants in the 1970s and 1980s challenging their clients to solve the "nine dots" puzzle. In 1976, the phrase is used in England and 1978 in the USA, both without mentioning the nine dots puzzle.īeyond the above attestations, there are several unconfirmed accounts of how the phrase got introduced. įinally, in 1971, the specific phrase think outside the box is attested, again appearing together with the nine dots puzzle. In 1970, the phrase think outside the dots appears without mentioning the nine dots puzzle. And just like the four lines that connect all the dots, you'll discover the course of action that's just right in order to set your life straight. Step outside the box your problem has created within you and come at it from a different direction.Īll of a sudden, just like the puzzle, you'll see how to handle your problem. Try and get a different perspective, a fresh point of view. From a little distance, you can see it a lot more clearly. Stand back and see it for exactly what it is. You've got to approach any problem objectively. They get caught up inside the box of their own lives. That puzzle represents the way a lot of people think. But if you keep trying to solve it inside the box, you'll never be able to master that particular puzzle. It's so simple once you realize the principle behind it. You can work on that puzzle, but the only way to solve it is to draw the lines so they connect outside the box.

It's a drawing of a box with some dots in it, and the idea is to connect all the dots by using only four lines. There is one particular puzzle you may have seen. The goal of the puzzle is to link all 9 dots using four straight lines or less, without lifting the pen. In 1969, Norman Vincent Peale writes this in an article for the Chicago Tribune, quote: Early phrasings include go outside the dots (1954), breakthrough thinking that gets outside the nine-dot square (1959), and what are the actual boundaries of the problem? (1963). Since at least 1954, the nine dots puzzle has been used as a metaphor of the type "think beyond the boundary". For example, in 1888, The Annual Register records the phrase think outside the lines. "Think beyond the boundary"-metaphors, that is, metaphors that allude to think differently or with less constraints, seem to have an old history. The phrase also often refers to novel or creative thinking. Thinking outside the box (also thinking out of the box or thinking beyond the box and, especially in Australia, thinking outside the square ) is a metaphor that means to think differently, unconventionally, or from a new perspective. Not to be confused with Out-of-the-box functionality. For other uses, see Outside the Box (disambiguation).
