Think Creatively within The Box

Learn to come up with clever ideas even if you have to work within the boundaries of your corporate culture or personal life.

Mention creativity or creative thinking and invitably, someone will say it is all about thinking outside the Box.

This is true to a certain degree. Creativity encomnpasses the ability to look beyond the tried and tested.But this doest not mean that the 'box' is necessarily bad.

Sometimes you need the box; you just have to ask what it presents.The 'box' may stand for the values that you uphold, the vision that you have & the principles that you line by.

Thinking beyond the 'box' might not be an option if you have to operate within a certain code of practises. You need to find out how you can be creative when you have to work within certain parameters.

Learn to use existing into to come up with new ideas. As philosopher George J.Seidel put it:" The ability to relate and connect sometimes in an odd and get in striking fashion, lies at the every heart of any creative use of the mind, no matter in what field or discipline."

Here are some tips to think creatively within the box:

Combine and Synthesise existing information

• Psychologist & author Myron S.Allen defined combination as the 'essence of creative imagination'.
• When you learn to combine information or things, you might come up with new solution & ideas.
• There are many combinations of unrelated products & services that have create new & effective ideas.For example: the radio was invented by an Italian, Guglielmo Marconi, and the telephone by an American, Alexander Graham Bell. When the radio & the telephone are combined, what do you get? A mobile phone!

Manipulating existing ideas

• Sun Tzu said:" manipulating is the brother of creativity".
• Sometimes, instead of thinking outside the box and coming up with something completely different, you can manipulate existing ideas to make a work process more effectives.

Disrupt your routine occasionally

• Most people have a routine. when you start doing things in a certain way, you become entrenced in it and enter into what is called the comfort zone.
• There is nothing wrong with the comform zone. After all, why change when everything is working fine, Right?
• The only problem is that you cannot guarantee that it will always be fine.
• Prepare yourself for change by occasionally disrupting your routine to see life from a different perspective or try doing something different every day.
• It does not have to be a drastic change. A little one will suffice, such as trying a new dish.-Take the train instead of the bus.
• Ask a collegue from another department in your organisation for lunch, and fine out what his job is all about.
• When you do routine things differently once in a while, your mind takes notice and you will start to look at your life from another angle.
• Many people get trapped in the 'obvious' - a though process where you think that what you're doing is the most logical way to do it, period such a thought process stifles creativity.
• A keen observer observer once said of Einstein that put of his genius was his inability to understand the obvious.
• Perhaps this is what you should do if you want to think creatively within the box.
• Learn to question the 'Obvious'thought process by paying attention to the small & insignificant things that surround you.
• That way, you will realise that there is more to creativity than meets the eye within the 'box' itself.

by: Daniel Theyagu.