Scalable Innovation

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6

Outside the Box

Developing Skills for

Creative Thinking

To encourage creativity, people often say, “Think outside the box.” The rec-

ommendation urges divergent thinking, a break from common rules and

assumptions. Murray Gell-Mann, a Nobel laureate in physics, believes that

the phrase originates from the popular nine-dots puzzle, where the solver

has to cross all the dots with no more than four straight lines without lift-

ing the pen [1] (Figure6.1). The puzzle is impossible to solve if the lines stay

inside the box (outlined by the dashed square in Figure6.1). But once you go

beyond the box, the solution becomes almost trivial.

A recent study ...